


but the heart of a man (is a simple one)

by orpheus_under_starlight



Series: a circle none can break [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (albeit a very strange one formatting-wise), (prior to and during heavensward), Angst with a Happy Ending, Au Ra Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Bisexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Dark Knight Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Demisexuality, Drabble Collection, Emotional Baggage, Emotionally Repressed, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), Missing Scene, Moving On, Other, Past Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light, Psychological Trauma, Resolved Sexual Tension, Riding, Saving the World, Summoner Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vaginal Fingering, a playthrough journal of sorts, it's a fic with thancred in it, sorry y'all a smile better befits a hero
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:46:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 93,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29191758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheus_under_starlight/pseuds/orpheus_under_starlight
Summary: — Aldera Lightwing stands ever at Destiny’s crossroads. Always has, ever since being shipwrecked the first time, but she's always stood alone, too.Love is the catalyst that changes her.(Or: the measure of a warrior, seen in the strength of her bonds.)
Relationships: Warrior of Light/Thancred Waters, others (not main focus)
Series: a circle none can break [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2143203
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> timeframes for each chapter:  
> 1\. 2.0 | ARR through the end of 3.3 | Heavensward (aka the resolution of the Dragonsong War)  
> 2\. Between 3.3 and "Tidings from Gyr Abania"  
> 3\. 3.4 through the end of the Doman Half of 4.0 | Stormblood  
> 4\. From the end of the Doman Half to the end of 4.0 | Stormblood Main Scenario  
> 5\. Between 4.0 | Stormblood Main Scenario and 4.1| The Legend Returns  
> 6\. From between 4.0 and 4.1 up to the beginning of 5.0 | Shadowbringers Main Scenario  
> 7\. 5.0 | Shadowbringers Main Scenario

[ ](https://ibb.co/4ZQd6Jn)

Minfilia senses the Echo in the girl nearly the instant she brightens the doorstep of the Waking Sands. Though Y’shtola has brought reports and sketches depicting their new friend’s appearance, she finds herself rather shocked by just how tiny Aldera Lightwing, hero of Limsa Lominsa, truly is. Tataru measures up to Aldera’s slim hips, and Papalymo much the same—which says much, considering that Lalafells are known for their lack of height, themselves. Why, Thancred towers over her, and— _oh—_

She hides her smile behind her hand. The others do not notice it, of that much she is certain, for Aldera makes use of her unusual appearance to veil that which she does not wish to be seen. The quick look sent in Thancred’s direction is one she’s seen many a lass (and lad) toss his way, much to the contrary of his previous bemoaning of her unaffected mien as he escorted her around the premises and attempted to work his charms. If her senses have the right of it, this next chapter in the Scions’ tale will have many amusements to behold, for dear Thancred, who feels so bound to protect them all and fill Louisoix’s shoes, has a glimmer in his eye beyond his usual degree of interest in ladies of all sorts as he regards Aldera.

Even as Aldera’s attention is taken up by Yda and Papalymo’s bickering, her body tells Minfilia that she is still _aware_ of Thancred: the most telling part of it is the base of her tail, which twitches every time he speaks, but there is more to see in the tense line of her shoulders and the tilt to her head, bent slightly toward him, as if attuning her horns to his presence. 

It all speaks to the panicked stirrings of youthful feelings, fresh and new. If Thancred were the first to catch their new friend’s eye, Minfilia should hardly be surprised.

“Whenceforth comes thy amusement, Antecedent?” asks Urianger at her side, and that his voice is pitched low tells her that he likely already knows what unspoken meaning she has discerned in their friends. 

Still, Minfilia turns to him, smiling. “Doubtless it can only be that which you yourself have perceived as well—a sprouting bond to be well-watched. I do believe we shall have some charming times ahead of us, do you not?”

“Thirty-one?!” 

At the exclamation, Minfilia quickly returns her attention to the scene at hand. Aldera is gawping up at Thancred, who looks mightily amused, and Y’shtola is eyeing her as if she is a particularly fascinating insect—unintentionally, she is sure. It is the first time Aldera has spoken and proven herself capable of the feat, and the girl’s voice, while currently heightened in surprise, is low and soft, pleasant to the ear. 

Thancred crosses his arms, smiling down at her. “Indeed, ‘tis so. And you, fair lady? Twenty-four, perhaps, to my eye...?”

“Hmm...” Aldera frowns to herself—and begins counting on her hands. Yda giggles. Papalymo whacks her knee; Aldera ignores Yda collapsing dramatically to the floor and mumbles under her breath as she apparently calculates how many summers have passed her by. “...beach... dragon... K’layne’s job... ah, in all... nineteen, I believe.”

She seems quite proud of this proclamation, a smile gracing her face, politely ignoring the stunned silence that has enveloped her.

Minfilia cannot wait to have the place to herself. She would certainly like to laugh about her instincts being proven correct, but though among friends, she needs must maintain the image of the Antecedent whenever she should happen to be standing in the solar.

“...You believe?” Y’shtola asks, recovering admirably. 

_Good work,_ Minfilia thinks fondly.

Aldera nods. “I cannot be certain. I may be older, but there is much that escapes my recall prior to the first time I was shipwrecked...”

“The _first_ time?!” Yda takes Aldera by the shoulder, checking her over as if she might still sustain an injury from any prior misadventure. “You don’t mean to say that you were shipwrecked _more_ than once?”

“Three times,” is the rather cheery response.

Y’shtola shakes her head. “Then I suppose we must be grateful that Hydaelyn’s grace has brought you to our door unharmed. You must endeavor to be more cautious from now on, Aldera.”

Aldera nods again, seeing that as sufficient response, and the conversation resumes. Thancred, though, is blinking to himself.

_Nineteen,_ Minfilia watches him mumble, near-soundless. _I must be more careful..._

“Dear Urianger,” Minfilia says, struck by a rare bout of mischievousness, “what say you to a small wager between friends?”

Urianger smiles. She rather wishes he would do so more often—it’s nice to see, from such a serious man. “What sort of wager, milady?”

“The length of time taken and the method by which it occurs. Simple, really.” 

He considers this for a few moments. “Years,” he says finally. “As to the last, such is beyond my reckoning.”

“You mean to say you do not know the stirrings of a young maiden’s heart?” Minfilia teases. They each know full well he has little interest in such things.

Well. Except where Moenbryda is concerned—but she has no desire to cause him to withdraw. Which he would, were she to voice it.

It only earns her a slow shrug. “’Twere a thing far from my youth, and further still from adulthood. But our friend is slow to realize that which truly matters—you know this well, as do I.”

“Indeed.” Somewhat more somber, she surveys her friends, glad that they are all here, healthy and whole. For the moment. “With luck, perhaps we will see developments soon. I intend to send them to Thanalan to investigate the Amal’jaa—so I will put my lot in for moons. How does that sound?”

“As milady wishes,” Urianger says with rich irony in his voice.

-

Aldera isn’t sure what she expects when first she meets Lord Haurchefant. Someone as cut-and-dry as the lord in the astrologer camp, perhaps, or a lord to match the cold climate of Coerthas, as so many others she has encountered in this land.

What she does not expect is to feel as if she has just stepped into hearth and home after many days out in the freezing north seas.

Haurchefant takes in her measure with intent curiosity. This she is used to: many a man it is that has looked her over and found her reputation to be mismatched to her stature, and then to demand that she prove herself anon. What she is not used to: that he reads the letter, takes a moment to gather himself, and then looks upon her with a small smile and bids her enjoy the hospitality of his camp as a guest of House Fortemps. Her surprise must show on her face—or perhaps he is as keen a man as Lord Francel described him to be—for he laughs, the sound of it wry, and leans back in his seat.

“Aldera,” he says, gesturing with his hand, “you have traveled many malms at great speed to deliver this message from a friend, and while I am sure you are eager to find your missing airship, you have said nothing of it for the hour and a half you have waited in here with me. Though Ishgard may be cold, your warmth has inspired mine in turn. Pray rest ere you return afield—the cold saps the strength from any man or woman who endures it overlong, even should they be ones who fell gods.”

She tries to talk, but she has to clear her throat first. When was the last time she spoke? Hells—when was the last time someone, upon her making an appearance, bid her not to do another task but instead to simply rest? “My thanks,” she manages with a light bow.

“Think nothing of it,” Haurchefant replies. 

And he means it.

When she emerges back into the cold, she feels warmer than she did while in the room with the actual furnace.

“Is everything quite alright?” Alphinaud asks with a frown. “Did all go well—?”

She nods and steps forward to ruffle his hair.

“Aldera!” he whines, covering his head, and she laughs. “Well. I suppose if you’re in such a good mood, things can’t have gone poorly. Are you going to grace me with your voice, or shall I have to puzzle it out from your facial expressions once more?”

Aldera shrugs. Right when his face drops in exasperation, she hands him a note. 

He takes it with a mollified mien to the set of his brows and quickly scans it. When he’s done he looks up with a raised brow. “Truly, he was that generous?”

She nods.

“We may thank our good fortune, then. Come, my friend. There is work to be done—Aldera?” She grips his wrist, kindly, and redirects his gaze to where she underlined the word ‘rest’ several times. Alphinaud looks at it, then her. “You actually wish to rest.”

She nods, vehemently this time.

“If even you wish to, then it would be churlish of me to refuse,” he sighs, seeming very churlish indeed, as many sixteen-year-old boys are, but he smiles anyways. “Lord Haurchefant is wise. I will admit the cold has indeed been trying... don’t _laugh,_ Aldera, these clothes were a gift!”

The inn is north of Lord Haurchefant’s office. Walking that direction, she smirks at Alphinaud.

“I swear to you that they were,” he persists as he hurries to catch up with her.

“Mm.”

“They were!”

“Mhmm,” she agrees. He throws up his hands. She snickers.

-

Thancred is full unconscious for the entirety of her escape from the Praetorium. This is likely a blessing for him, but she will never quite remember how she managed to hoist him up onto Maggie and secure him so that he would not fall off as she pushed the power core to its maximum limits. He’s not exactly light with all that muscle. She does remember, quite viscerally, how when she stood before her friends and the Alliance leaders and tried to ease him off the magitek armor, she had failed entirely, and the resulting undignified tumble onto the ground with his unconscious body on top of her had left them all in shocked silence until Merlwyb and Raubahn took pity on her and hoisted Thancred off her.

She had passed out after that. Something about the exhaustion of the day’s events, Yda told her later, and she hadn’t been out for long. Only after she woke did she recall the gaunt sharpness of Thancred’s body on top of hers, taut in places a body ought not to be, and for the first time think of him—strong, wise, handsome, and skilled—as keenly mortal.

“It seems I’m in your debt,” he says to her with a rueful smile when she checks in on him that night at Minfilia’s behest. She sets the tray of food Tataru sent with her down on his bedside table and meets his gaze in the low candlelight he has opted to leave burning. His eyes are dark. Something about him looks haunted, and she wonders how she didn’t see it before, how she had been too flustered to truly understand. 

Aldera shakes her head and points to the tray. She gives him an expectant look.

“...Worried about me, sweetheart?” Thancred asks, a deflecting motion, and she nods. Because she is. He blinks in surprise. She’s not following the usual pattern of their rapport, and she can tell he has to take a minute to puzzle it out, exhausted as he is. “I—oh.”

“Eat,” she says, quiet and firm.

He sighs. The smile returns. “If our champion is asking, how could I possibly say no? Truly, thank you, Aldera.”

“Everyone’s worried,” she tells him. “Especially Minfilia. So eat what you can. The rest will come in time.”

“Duly noted,” he murmurs, studying her with some new consideration in his gaze.

She hesitates for a moment. Then she pulls out a piece of drawing parchment, carefully folded, and presses it into his hands. At his questioning look she shrugs, self-conscious, tail twitching, and hurries out the door.

Thancred unfolds the parchment and smooths it out. It’s a sketch—not just a random, haphazard sketch, he realizes quickly, but a preparatory sketch of the Scions completed to the point where it could easily be turned into a painting. They’re happy and laughing together with him in the center and a cake on the table in front of them all. He can tell she’s taken care to properly depict the details: every Archon tattoo in its proper location, each Scion expressing themselves as is characteristic of them. 

He brushes a finger over where she has put herself, next to Minfilia and Y’shtola, a small smile on her face. 

“So that’s how you feel,” he says. What she had been unable to put into words comes through clear as crystal. He scans it again, lingering on his own face, apparently laughing at Yda gesturing expressively at Papalymo. “Ah... or perhaps this is your wish, mm? Either way...”

_...it’s a sweet sentiment,_ he thinks, only belatedly realizing he’s been speaking to the thin air of his room. The parchment is folded every bit as carefully as it was the first time and tucked into his interior vest pocket, though he has to lean over to grab his chair and drag it close enough to do so.

It stays there, in that pocket, until the pocket itself disintegrates in the wake of Y’shtola’s desperate Flow spell.

-

Truthfully, when Aldera Lightwing first strides into his little office, Haurchefant has to look twice to be sure he is truly seeing what he is seeing. It’s not that he’s never seen an Au Ra before—adventurers are aware that Camp Dragonhead regards them with more friendliness than most other settlements under the jurisdiction of the Holy Sees—but it is, in truth, the first time he has seen anyone not a Lalafell be so remarkably short and yet fully grown into themselves. 

It’s... cute.

All the moreso for her martial prowess, which he has the happy opportunity to witness firsthand when she accompanies him on the hunt to save young Francel, and which makes plain the mystery of how this woman could be the one to fell gods. 

She shifts in front of him. Quite abruptly, Haurchefant realizes he has been staring. He smiles, meeting her eyes. “My apologies, my friend—I was lost in thought. I bid you welcome once again. Have you been about long?”

“No,” she replies, smiling in turn. It’s a shy thing, that smile, and he tries to recall if he has seen it before. Mayhap once when he first bade her welcome? “I just arrived. I thought to come say hello...”

A social visit! Pleased, Haurchefant stands and rounds the desk. “Well then! You must allow me to show you some proper hospitality. Though if you’ve business to go about first, pray, do not let me keep you from it.”

“Nothing for the moment.” 

“Excellent,” he says. “Come with me.”

And come with him she does. His quarters are rather tucked away compared to the convenient placement of his office next to the main thoroughfare, and he sees to it that she is provided with a mug of hot chocolate and a veritable spread of sweets appropriate for the setting of his sitting room. Aldera takes a moment to look at the contents of her mug, then to sip at it; Haurchefant is hard-pressed not to laugh when her eyes widen and she happily takes another, deeper drink. Her tail flicks. Another sip and she directs her aetheric gaze at him, her enjoyment plain. “This is very good.”

“I certainly agree—it’s one of my favorites, at any rate. Can I surmise, then, that you would welcome such and similar while here?” Haurchefant asks.

Aldera blinks. He worries for a moment that he has pushed too far, but she smiles at him. “If it would be no trouble, I could hardly object. The road demands nutritional fare... so this is a treat I am glad for.”

“Then I shall see to it.” He smiles in turn. He does not think he imagines the shy fondness in her eyes, and although he had already resolved to do it when she helped him resolve the matter of Francel, he feels keenly again the desire to bring that fondness out into the forefront—to know Aldera Lightwing, the woman, simply for the sake of knowing her. “Last we spoke you were on the trail of a lost wolf pup in La Noscea, and found yourself its new owner once indeed you had found it. What have you seen and done since then?”

“Well...”

-

They begin writing letters through the reignition of the Dragonsong. She keeps him abreast of her travels—Haurchefant comes to know her companions as if he knew them himself, so clear is the regard in which she holds them—and includes sketches of the places she sees, from the ponderous eaves of the Black Shroud to the high cliffs and sprawling rock structures of La Noscea. In comparison he fears his letters quite dull: he chooses to focus on the day to day events of Camp Dragonhead, mostly, as much as is safe to say through the easily-intercepted medium of the written word, and given her fascination with cooking, provides his thoughts both on the meals she tells him of and the ones he himself takes. 

But she seems to cherish each telling, no matter the lack of thrill. The mundanity of it may be soothing to such a woman, he supposes, and he finds writing to her helps him resolve conflicts and think about the camp from angles he would not have considered without her input.

Gradually, he finds that he begins to look forward to not only her letters, but the times she has business in Coerthas. It becomes known that the young lord of the House Fortemps garrison and the Scions’ representative in Ishgardian lands are good friends. 

Haurchefant is careful to keep public perceptions there, and to treat Aldera with nothing but the utmost respect.

He likes to think he knows himself: ever has he been an unusual flame in a sea of ice. Though he has his father’s love, there exist those who do not well approve of his prominence in Fortemps’s affairs, and they are stayed from direct criticism only by the steadfastness of his virtues as a knight. It would not do for his growing affection for Aldera to become a thorn in her side, even if he does long to see her linger in Dragonhead a little longer with each visit, to lend her succor and aid whenever she should have need of it—and perhaps to hold her, should she be amenable to it—

“Halone preserve,” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes and setting the scout report he had not been making any progress on aside for a moment in favor of taking a hearty sip from his mug of tea.

But she would be beautiful under the light of the stars—with the pendant currently sitting in his desk drawer hung round her neck—smiling up at him—

_Oh, enough,_ Haurchefant tells his fool heart as he gets back to work.

Aldera visits not a day later, her sense of timing as excellent as ever, for he has a lull between meetings and enough hours in the evening to pay her full attention. The pendant earns him a soft smile. She has him secure it around her neck, and he knows he doesn’t imagine the little shiver up her spine and the lean backwards as his fingers brush the nape of her neck.

That night, he kisses her—gently, lightly, tentatively—and she returns it with enthusiasm.

There is much that must be done, a war to be seen to, and precious little time to be spent together, but he finds his heart well encouraged.

-

Duty calls. Aldera is needed by the Scions and the Braves, and so she returns to Revenant’s Toll. Her next letter comes to him courtesy of a Crystal Brave with slicked-back blonde hair and an eyepatch; Haurchefant suspects that if Riol did not seem so worried, he would be the roguish sort in personality and candor alike. 

_Dear Haurchefant,_

_The past few days have been foggy here in Mor Dhona. Alphinaud is ever busy with the Braves. I fear him blind to the matter you and I spoke of last I visited. I may be young myself, but I know when a set-up is happening. As you read this the Scions ought to be en route to a banquet ostensibly in our honor... ostensibly. There is something wrong with all of this. Should anything go amiss, I will hardly be surprised. I have told Riol what is too dangerous to commit to parchment, and I would bid him stay and aid you how he may, but I suspect he is too stubborn to simply lay low before he has done all he may do to mitigate the damage._

_You have ever been kind to me and mine even when you did not know me, so I am loathe to ask this of you, but I fear I must, for I know no one else who could do this—I and the other Scions may need shelter in the coming days. In my heart it is a near certainty. We have become too visible for the tastes of certain factions, and you know of my other reservations._

_If you cannot, know that I bear no ill will. Either way things go, the sight of you will gladden my heart._

_Sincerely,_

_Aldera_

“You may be interested to know,” Haurchefant says, glancing up from the letter at Riol, “that she has vouched for you here, and is concerned for your well-being. If you need safe harbor, Camp Dragonhead certainly welcomes you.”

Riol blinks, then laughs, a pleasant sound marred by wry tension as he scrubs his hand down his face. “She leaves nothing to chance, eh? I’m no spring chick, though I appreciate her concern. Nay, my inquiries have been well unnoticed—I’ll not be suspected. Puts me in a good position to keep tabs on certain parties. Though I daresay it’ll be a minute and then some until we work together again. Pray tell’er t’keep her wits about her. She’ll need them.”

And that is that. Haurchefant worries through the rest of the day and well into the night. Aldera’s friends arrive before the woman herself does, and he busies himself with seeing to the safety of Tataru and Yugiri instead of losing his mind—Aldera is Aldera, and she will make it through.

This is what he tells himself. He has the utmost faith in her, of course, but he knows she has been stressed, and though she can well take care of herself...

A hand lands on his forearm. “Pray sit down, Lord Haurchefant. You look as if you might fall over.”

“Forgive me,” he says with a smile, turning to Yugiri. There is a knowing look in the soft-spoken woman’s gaze. “I do worry. ‘Tis far from a pleasant thing, to know a friend to be in danger and be unable to go to their aid.”

“Full well do I know the feeling, milord.”

They wait in a restless silence.

-

“You must know that I am happy to help however I may,” Haurchefant says softly when at last she is safe and perched on his couch with grief in her eyes. “Whatever is within my power to grant would be a pleasure to bequeath unto you.”

Aldera scoots nearer to him. Taking the hint, he wraps an arm around her, and she—with some deft maneuvering to allow for her horns—lays her head against his shoulder. “Your presence is enough. I’ve missed you.”

“And I you. I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you hale and whole.”

She makes a noise of what he knows by now to be gratitude. They lapse into a comfortable silence, albeit one whose circumstances were brought about by injustice. Haurchefant wonders at that: had it not been for the Monetarist insurrection it might’ve been days or weeks before he saw her again, depending on the demands of each of their duties, during which time she would likely end up slaying another god or dragon or dragon-god. If it meant she kept her friends by her side, he would happily wait as long as needed, but it now falls to him to tend to her wounded soul—she has hardly had so much as a break in as many as five moons, and he fears with happenings in Ishgard she will not have a wealth of it ahead of her.

“I knew Alphinaud was in over his head,” Aldera speaks up. He looks down at her, but her hair hides the bulk of her expression. “Even with Riol’s initial look at the books coming out clean—I’d a mind to talk to him, but there was never time, and he was so excited. And there was good that the Crystal Braves did... but I ought to have intervened when Ilberd killed that merchant at the Burning Wall, if not long beforehand. Only everyone was relying on me... and I could not speak as to why disquiet haunted me so. So I said nothing, and now the Scions are four in number...”

She trails off, biting her lip, and Haurchefant can sense more underneath that—some old wound, freshly reopened.

Alphinaud had been the one of the two of them that had seemed the most in disarray. Truly, the two of them had been most unlike themselves, rushing in from the cold with grief and pain in their bearing, appearing for the first time as small in stature as they physically are and not as they generally like to portray themselves.

Namely, as rather larger than their height would suggest.

But he ought to have known that his darling warrior was pulling on some inner strength to keep Alphinaud from collapsing. What a pair they are, indeed, both arcanists stubbornly refusing to express the aches of their hearts until the need becomes too great to deny.

He pulls her into his lap and wraps her in the fullness of his embrace, some part of him marveling at how petite she truly is while the rest of him considers what to say. “Operating in politics on the scale young Alphinaud has begun to is fraught with a myriad of what-ifs and a multitude of shadows. I myself prefer the honesty of the battlefield, but I have watched Ishgard’s elite make use of that selfsame battlefield to wage their own, pettier wars, with supply shipments and troop numbers and positioning as their instruments. Worse men have risen and fallen for far more foolish reasons, and what I know of Alphinaud tells me that the lad’s heart is good, but he is headstrong in the way many smart boys are. I meant what I said to him—hope is far from lost. And when your spirits are low...”

He leans over and plucks the mug of hot chocolate from the side table, then places it in her hands and covers one of hers with his own.

“I will be here,” Haurchefant promises. He presses a kiss to the side of her head. “And I shall ever be your knight, Lady Lightwing, my dearest.”

Aldera giggles, her cheeks turning a rather pretty shade of dusky blue, and the sound of her mirth makes the clench of his chest loosen, just a tad. 

-

“Be honest—it’s great, isn’t it?” Edmont hears Haurchefant saying, and though his son is known to have pep in his voice with a fair regularity, something about the boy’s tone strikes his father’s ears as being unusually full of cheer. His eyes stray to where Haurchefant and the Warrior of Light have taken up a corner of the entry hall, the Warrior leaning against the wall while Haurchefant regards her with a particularly wide smile, and the lass herself—an Au Ra, if he is not mistaken, which makes him all the more glad he thought to provide the Scions with papers—bears a certain softness in her expression that had not been quite so pronounced when she was looking upon her companions earlier.

She smiles as she speaks. “It is. Truly, rare has been my opportunity to look upon a place so lovely. To grow within these walls—I can see why you love it.”

“You flatter my house,” Haurchefant tells her, then laughs. “And ‘tis flattery I am well pleased to hear! It is my hope that you will take full opportunity to enjoy the sights around as time allows you, my dear friend, for there are none so beautiful as those from Ishgard’s heights on a clear day. Though knowing you, you would sooner behold them from even higher upon your mount, would you not?”

“Mayhaps.” She gives him a playful half-shrug. Her eyes twinkle.

Haurchefant could not hide his regard for her if he tried, nor could he conceal the besotted look upon his dear face any better than he could at six years of age when he beheld his brothers for the first time. Edmont shakes his head, ever so slightly, and is completely unsurprised to hear Emmanellain shuffling closer to Artoirel in order to loudly whisper in the older boy’s ear. “So that’s the one, eh?”

_“Hush,_ Emmanellain,” Artoirel rebukes, but he seems no less invested in Haurchefant’s happy conversation with the woman who has slain gods.

Edmont turns to them and rests both hands upon his cane. He takes his time in giving the two of them individually stern looks. “If you’ve time to gossip, I daresay you’ve time to attend to your duties rather than gawk at our guests.”

“Father—!” Emmanellain starts, then yelps when Artoirel pinches his ear. Rubbing the abused tip, he pouts at Edmont. “You _must_ understand, I am merely attempting to get a measure of our dear guests, and...”

“Enough,” Edmont says. Emmanellain is no longer a boy of thirteen years, and he knows this as well as the rest of them. Why he insists upon acting as such when it has not earned him respect... “Leave this matter well enough alone. Matters of far more import ought to be your concern—such as that of House Haillenarte’s request for aid. Is this understood?”

His youngest sighs. “Yes, Father.”

-

Near every moment they manage in the following months is stolen. Borrowed time in dim candlelight—hushed conversations, quiet laughter, the flickering light and the dark shadows around creating an intimate, secret world that she will keep close to her heart for the rest of her life. With him she can be merely Aldera, young and imperfect. Leaders of nations do not look to her to fell their gods. Leaders of men and women do not look to her to be their unyielding pillar. Instead Haurchefant struggles not to laugh at her while she tries to convince him that boiling water with a controlled Fire spell is a perfectly valid method of making tea.

And he kisses her—sweet and soft, ever considerate—with freely-given affection.

For Aldera, whose keep has always needed to be earned, his easy warmth is a wonder. He melts something inside her that had been so long frozen solid that she had forgotten that there was any other way to be, and he does it by merely being himself.

Haurchefant learns of many things about Aldera Lightwing that she had thought would needs be consigned to the broad swathe of forgotten things in history. Her childhood in La Noscea as a deckhand after washing up with the tide in Costa del Sol, among other things, and her quiet hunger for knowledge, which, before the Calamity, drove her to save her gil for a year to have a scholar teach her how to read, only for the scholar she requisitioned—an old traveler whose fancy clothes had, to her, marked him as a man of knowing—to end up actively refusing her payment, and instead bade her to remember just one thing: that Darkness or Light would decide the fates of men and women.

“That sounds awfully prophetic,” Haurchefant says slowly.

Aldera nods. “I wouldn’t realize until I met the Scions that that man was, in truth, Grandmaster Louisoix.”

“Your luck is incredible. Truly,” he insists when she begins to shake her head. “You have survived all manner of things, and met all manner of people, with an extraordinarily good sense of timing. And this was true of you before Hydaelyn’s blessing. It is a part of you, dear friend.”

She blinks at him in surprised silence, then laughs, leaning forward to kiss him. When she pulls back, her smile reaches her eyes. “I suppose if it led me to you, it can’t be all bad.” 

“When you look upon me so I can scarcely think,” he says with an answering smile of his own. Evening has fallen in Coerthas, and they have stolen away to his quarters in Camp Dragonhead with a basket full food she purchased from the market earlier that day, ostensibly in preparation for her, Alphinaud, and Estinien’s search for Lady Iceheart. Really, it feels nearly like being a child again, hiding in some corner of whatever ship she was working on that week with an apple in hand, except the company now is far better—and far more exciting—than those lonely hours whiled away in rare, lazy solitude.

So she curls further into his embrace, determined to enjoy every moment. “I’d say ‘then don’t’, but I enjoy hearing your thoughts.”

“Ah, a lure,” he says cheerfully. “And one I am most happy to oblige... but first, do allow me to make a counter-offer.”

“Oh?”

Another kiss, slow and heated, and Aldera could melt as he looks at her. “Let me take care of you,” Haurchefant whispers.

_“Oh,”_ she says, then blinks several times as her face heats, because the images that pop into her head are remarkably appealing. Still, she pauses. “Are you sure? You did say such things were foreign to you—”

“Indeed, before you, my interest never struck as anything more than exceedingly passing fancy. But if you do not wish it—”

Oh, this sweet, sweet man. She throws her arms around him. “I do, I do. Pray do not hold back on my account.”

“Then we figure this out together—and I do believe I know exactly how to start.”

Night falls, but they do not notice.

-

Haurchefant shields her—and the shield breaks.

It is not the first time her world is sundered, but it is the first time that the tear wounds her so deeply that it scars as it heals.

He bids her smile, and so she smiles best she can, pushing back her shattering heart to reach past Aymeric’s arms and cup Haurchefant’s jaw, brushing her thumb across his cheek with a trembling hand. He is growing weak so, too quickly, but he smiles at her in turn, fully open, and whispers _I am sorry, my love,_ and Aldera has destroyed primal after primal, but it takes all of her strength not to break here, in front of him, in his last moments.

“You have never needed to apologize. I love you, too,” she murmurs. By some miracle, her voice is steady. “Sweet Haurchefant... thank you. Thank you for loving me.”

There is so much else she wants to say. So much more, and that she will never again see his pleased smile when she brings him a gift from some corner of Eorzea or hear his laughter as he recounts yet another cooking misadventure undertaken by his knights in the pursuit of ultimate flavor is unfathomably devastating, and she has lost everything before—home, family, and friend, yet none of it cut so deep then as this does now.

Haurchefant closes his eyes with a smile. He breathes out.

He does not take another breath in.

Aldera covers her mouth as a sob wrenches itself from her throat, only distantly aware that Ser Aymeric has closed his eyes to allow her some privacy, that around her her comrades look on in stunned grief. She knows Alphinaud stands somewhere behind her, frozen, and Lucia a few paces from Aymeric’s side has bowed her head, and Estinien is silent in that same forbidding rage with which he demonstrated his anguish, but she cares little for any of it as she leans her head down against Haurchefant’s unmoving chest and weeps for him—for her loss of him, for his future, cut short to protect her—until too-gentle hands bid her rise and step away to allow Aymeric to bear the body of the man who loved her away from the Vault.

How long she stands gazing sightlessly at the sky she does not know. Midgardsormr uncurls from the back of her mind and bids her gather herself and away, and it is this command that brings some semblance of her back to herself.

She will mourn in private as she has so many other times. There is work to be done now.

-

Aldera can feel the weight of her friends’ stares—furtive, questioning, except Estinien, Twelve bless him—but she bides her silence.

Until Aymeric asks.

And she looks him dead in the eye as she says, “Life for death. I will have Zephinien’s head for what he did to Haurchefant.”

She did not understand, before, what drove Nidhogg, even as Estinien spoke from the echo of Nidhogg’s own heart, experienced through that Eye, even as Hraesvelgr told them the tale in full, even as she faced off with the dread wyrm in battle. That a sister murdered should be cause for vengeance was no surprise—no strange thing—but the lengths of his rage, the depths of it, she now knows in some small mortal part, the selfsame mortal part that had recoiled in horror as Haurchefant fell and shattered into pieces as he breathed out.

Were Zephinien to depart to the ends of the earth, she would pursue him above all else until she stood over him and extracted the blood price he ensured he would pay when he killed the one she loved—

“Yes,” Aymeric says, soft, understanding in his eyes. “Yes, I... you two were always close...”

It’s a delicate way to put it. He had been the one to hear their last words to each other, everyone here had, so in truth she finds the careful wording pointless, but a part of her is grateful for it. For the distance it implies. She inclines her head. “Beyond this room—that is where the understanding of the way of things must end. I... I know we were not subtle, but we had our reasons... for not being open...”

“Of course.” He puts a hand over his heart. “You have my word. And my condolences.”

“Pray save those for Count Fortemps. He will have need of them more than I,” she murmurs, and feels Alphinaud’s hand on her shoulder, a grounding touchstone to focus on as he picks up the slack of the conversation and redirects it toward the matter of their next steps. Even as some part of her catalogues the words exchanged between her friends, the rest of her drifts.

Haurchefant. The shield, broken. The look in his eyes. How he had asked for forgiveness. _Haurchefant—_

Before Estinien departs to see to his duties, he pulls her aside and hands her a note with coordinates scrawled on it in sharp, jerky lines. “My training grounds,” he says quietly, “in the crux of the Nail. I know grief, and I know vengeance. You needn’t tread lightly should you have occasion to come for a match.”

“Thank you,” Aldera says. She means it.

Estinien nods, and his piece said, he goes.

-

Before she leaves to pursue the Soleil, Count Edmont stays her with a hand on her shoulder. Rather a lot of people seem to choosing that as their favored method of getting her attention, recently. Alphinaud demonstrates a rare perceptiveness and leaves them be; Aldera turns to the Count, whose eyes are red-rimmed with grief, and waits. She isn’t sure what he’s about to say, whether he has words of judgment or benediction for her, and if her own sorrow was not blotting out all other feeling, she might have been more nervous than she is.

Instead, she only feels numb.

“My son,” Edmont says, not unkindly, clearly making an effort to remember his manners. “He loved you.”

Aldera nods. Her heart feels like it’s being clamped into a vise. “And I him. He—we—I—”

She cuts herself off because she doesn’t know how to explain it. How Haurchefant had confided in her that he had wished to introduce her to his father under better circumstances—one less bound by political necessities, with greater cause for celebration. How his brothers had both looked at her knowingly when they first saw her, as if they already knew, and how Ser Aymeric—who had been as good as another brother to Haurchefant, to her eye—had very conveniently found ways to leave them time alone when Haurchefant’s duties allowed.

“Then consider yourself a daughter of House Fortemps,” Edmont tells her. “Your pendant—” he has to pause, closing his eyes for a moment, “—it mattered a great deal to Haurchefant. He would not have parted with it unless he was entirely sure of his choice. It... it was his mother’s, to the best of my understanding.”

Aldera tries not to cry, to restrain the tears that spring up at that piece of information, because she hadn’t known that. All her stoicism fails her in the moment. She bows her head, struggling mightily with herself, and nearly jumps when Edmont lays a gentle hand on top of her head. “I—” she breathes out, squeezing her eyes shut, her arms so tight around herself that she thinks she’s probably going to bruise. “It’s—my fault—Haurchefant—”

“Not so, child,” Edmont murmurs, his own voice thick with barely-restrained grief. “He—his duty—he did what needed to be done. Pray honor his sacrifice. Bring Ishgard her justice.”

“I will,” she manages. He withdraws after that, overwhelmed, and she makes her way to the airship landing in muted silence. 

Cid takes one look at her when she arrives and pulls her into his arms. She lets him and leans her forehead on his chest. He, at least, still has a beating heart—he’s warm, considering how little he usually wears when piloting. After a moment he sighs into her hair and leans back to put his hands on her shoulders and look her in the eye. “I’m sorry, Aldera.”

“So am I,” is all she can think to say.

He grimaces. But, apparently sensing that any further belaboring of the point would be unwelcome, he presses no further. “Are you ready to depart? There’s no telling how long our trip will be.”

Aldera nods, pulling the neutral mask of the Warrior of Light back on. The Sea of Clouds awaits them... as does the archbishop, somewhere within.

-

She dreams she can almost save him—that she can nearly summon the Light needed to negate that accursed spear.

But she can’t ever succeed.

Aldera takes to sleeping less and less.

-

Estinien’s lack of surprise when she alights on the mountain clearing is palpable. He straightens from a crouch. “Aldera.”

“I am here,” she says. “Have you got terms?”

“None,” he replies, and at her incredulous look he smirks, crossing his arms. “I will weather your fury as I weather Nidhogg’s, girl. Come at me with the full bearing of your might—I would see that which has slayed primals in her full glory.”

Aldera shakes her head. “’Tis your funeral, friend—but so be it. Only let us be careful that we do not level the mountain. I do not imagine the wildlife would be too pleased.”

“Ha! Bold words. I like it!” Estinien readies his spear.

A dragoon matched up against a summoner would be Thancred’s idea of a bad joke. But Aldera is not possessed of her reputation for nothing, this much she knows, and it is with the memory of that javelin of light that she summons Ifrit-Egi to her and begins casting.

-

[ ](https://imgbb.com/)

_Hope incarnate,_ Haurchefant had called her. Aldera stares at the hole in the shield, holds it with a numbness, as Count Edmont entrusts her with the hopes of his nation and his son, and all she can think is the selfish thought of _I have none left for mine own self—_ none for Aldera Lightwing, the girl, the woman, who must needs be consigned to oblivion if the Warrior of Light is to fulfill her dead lover’s last wishes. 

Only distantly does she realize tears are leaking out her eyes once they land upon the shield. She closes her eyes, wipes the tears away, and looks to the Count. “As you say, milord. I will protect Ishgard.”

“Father,” Edmont requests, uncommonly gentle for such a man.

Aldera bows her head. “Father.”

“Go now,” he tells her. “I have full faith in you, as would my son.”

So Aldera goes.

-

.

She doesn’t attend the ceremony.

After everything she finds herself far from able to tolerate such formalities, particularly not in the manner of the Holy See, even if it is Aymeric spearheading the event and his people arranging it to his (less fussy) specifications. She leaves Fortemps Manor—and Ishgard itself—hours before the dawn breaks, and instead finds her way to the clifftop Artoirel had told her of before the household retired to bed. By now the bitter cold is such a fact of existence that she hardly cares to pay heed to the chill the wind brings, gentle though that wind is, as she approaches the grave at the cliff’s edge.

Count Edmont may not have been able to bury his son in the Fortemps crypt, but he spared no other expense. Haurchefant’s tombstone is made of the finest quarried granite, polished to a loving sheen and engraved with the simplicity and elegance her lover had favored in his personal effects. She does not know who rests in the other six graves—other bastard sons, perhaps, of other noble Houses, though perhaps not those of House Fortemps. 

Neither does she care much.

“Haurchefant,” she says into the wind, watching the hole in the shield as if something might happen if she wishes hard enough, “I... I have avenged you.”

There is no answer—of course.

Aldera sighs. “And yet in a wrong righted, I only feel empty. After you, we lost Ysayle, then Estinien. Alphinaud has given himself no time to grieve. My mind... has begun to wander to something I have told no one of, and something I am sure Alphinaud has forgotten: the matter of Ilberd’s words to me those moons ago when he told me I am but a pawn. I, the arm of whoever tells me to be.”

She is silent for a few moments as the memories pass her by. Her ruby carbuncle rolls in the snow, careless, though near enough to heed her at a word should she need.

“I wonder if he was not wrong in his assessment,” she says finally. “I joined readily to the Scions—it seemed to me that whether or not I wished it, I scarcely had a choice, as Hydaelyn bade me to save her. I do not know why it was me—I know, darling, I know what you would say. But I cannot see the goodness in me which you saw. Without you, who will look beyond the Warrior and behold the girl? In some ways... In some ways I am as a thrall, serving a goddess with boundless measures simply because I am told to. My fear is that I will come to forget that you treated me as the person I am. That I will lose myself to duty and become the Warrior in her entirety.” She curls in on herself, forehead pressed to her knees, tail coiled up around her waist, and squeezes her eyes shut. “Haurchefant, I do not wish it.”

Shivers wrack her body and she waits for them to pass her by as she always does.

“...The dawn comes without you to face it, and my fear must take its place by its side in your grave,” Aldera murmurs when the shivers subside.

_But I will hide here with you for just a little longer. Yes._

_Just a little bit longer._

That she ends up spending half the day there, until Alphinaud and Tataru come to find her, only speaks to how long the ceremony is.

-

The days and months that follow prove relentless. She’s almost grateful that Alphinaud does not press or pry, instead opting to focus on their business and recovering their lost friends, though he does linger in the evenings and chat in her general direction before retiring to bed for a little longer than he did before, and opts to speak up for her without his previous annoyance as she grows quieter in the wake of Haurchefant’s death, some part of her that had blossomed with the attentive care of the one person in Eorzea given to readily seek her out and not the Warrior beginning to wilt in the absence of any such thing. 

Aldera tries not to mope—truly, she does. She is well aware of the work to be done, of what Haurchefant would wish for her, and so she dedicates herself to continuing to be Alphinaud’s right hand as he carries out the Scions’ mission. But even working herself to exhaustion does not allow her to escape the gaping maw of grief, within whose jaws she ever sits, as she tries to drift off to sleep.

Again and again, night after night, the shield breaking plays itself out in her mind.

They reunite with their friends slowly. Aldera is able to keep up a good front. (Not good enough to fool Cid, but luckily they see each other only sparingly, even if he does threaten to buy her a drink each time.) It proves effective enough that she is able to carry it with her as though it were its own type of shield even after Edmont bequeaths a Fortemps shield of her own unto her. 

Months pass by. Aldera spends those months trying out different things: she learns the way of the ninja from Yugiri and the rogues’ path from Riol, she assists the other former Braves in teaching the Doman children the basics of combat, she has Tataru teach her bookkeeping so she can handle her expenses with more wisdom, and she dives into artisan crafting. Near every guild in every major city sees something of her, and her room in the Rising Stones becomes a clutter half-made of workshop tools and materials and half-made of all different kinds of armor in different states of repair—the bed is still there, but it’s very much an afterthought. 

Urianger, visiting the Rising Stones as he does more often these days, takes to spending quiet afternoons with her as she tinkers away at some new craft and he delves into his research. He says little and demands nothing, and Aldera is glad for his steady presence. Tataru stops in with snacks and tea once a day. Y’shtola occasionally drops by her room when she’s back from fieldwork to join her and Urianger, which usually results in Aldera’s two Archon friends getting into complicated discussions about aetheric theory while she listens and works. Most of it flies over her head—these are true scholars, with degrees and years of training that she never had—but she begins to pick things up listening to Y’shtola expound at length on the issue of aetheric retention in crystal-based mechanisms and Urianger posit the effects white auracite might have on said retention rate.

Enough to understand that what Y’shtola did to send herself and Thancred away that night of the banquet was dangerous enough that she is lucky to still be alive.

“I wonder,” Aldera says absentmindedly one day as she mends one of her undershirts, “why Hydaelyn chose those she did, and did not choose others.”

Y’shtola and Urianger fall silent.

She glances up. “What?”

“The common wisdom would hold that a god chooses as it wills, with the implication of there not necessarily being rhyme or reason to it,” Y’shtola says slowly. “But it is possible that there is a rhythm to it. Of those we know of who were chosen—you, the Antecedent, and the Lady Iceheart—”

“Her name was Ysayle,” Aldera says.

“Ysayle,” Y’shtola continues without missing a beat. “The three of you shared a common characteristic: your investment in a goal that goes beyond yourself. Though I would be hesitant to postulate any further than that without knowing more of the Mother herself.”

“Hear, feel, think,” Aldera recites, putting her mending down on her knees for a moment as she closes her eyes and thinks. “She began every communication with those words, as if my being needed attunement before I could perceive her in those ways. She desires that the planet live, and living beings flourish in the Light. Beyond that...” She trails off with a shrug.

Urianger contemplates this as he does many other things: slowly, but with no less intellect for it. “Ysayle, by your account, longed for a world better than that which we know. As do you, and as did the Antecedent. ‘Tis not a far-flung thing to think such altruism be in line with Hydaelyn’s will.”

“But...” She stops herself.

Y’shtola’s eyes are too inquisitive. Too intent. “Yes?”

“It’s nothing,” Aldera murmurs, shaking her head. “Pray continue on.”

_Why me and not Haurchefant?_ she wonders. _To speak of altruism—he was better endowed of it than I. Why not one better suited to the call, better equipped to make a difference, than a whelp who thrice-barely escaped from a seawreck?_

If only there were not bitterness in the thought. Perhaps Hydaelyn senses that selfsame bitterness, for She remains silent.

-

One night Aldera retires to her rooms exceedingly early, entirely too exhausted to keep up with Y’shtola and Alphinaud’s rapid-fire exchange of wits at the cards table, and Alphinaud looks in her direction with a frown—which ensures his quick loss, as Y’shtola seizes the advantage and slaps her remaining two cards down on top of the stacks in front of them. 

“Blitz,” she declares with some relish, then snaps her fingers in front of Alphinaud’s face. He flinches back, glaring at her. Tataru looks between them with a frown. “Alphinaud. Tell me what has occurred with Aldera in my absence. It is plain to see that aught is not well with her, yet neither Urianger or myself have been able to wring out so much as a word from the girl. Were your feats in Ishgard truly so taxing?”

Tataru clears her throat. “Well...”

“It’s alright, Tataru,” Alphinaud says. He shakes his head, his eyes drifting down to the table as the familiar pangs of guilt pry at his chest with their claws. “Y’shtola... truly, it is not my story to tell. But I can see well enough that she is not telling it. You see... it has to do with Lord Haurchefant.”

Y’shtola surveys him—though she cannot see, he is certain she can tell well enough that he is hesitant. “I’m listening.”

“They were in love,” he says in a low voice. “Or—well—at least I think they were. Though they did their best to hide it, seeing as affairs in Ishgard were not the most conducive to openness.” He worries at his lip. “His passing seems to have struck a significant blow to her heart. A small wonder having seen them talk—you ought to have seen it yourself. Such happiness... they understood each other. But your frustration is the same as mine. She will not speak a word of him, and I find myself loathe to pry, particularly given the small matter of Ishgardian attitudes toward the Au Ra and then Lord Haurchefant’s status. He had a delicate balance to keep—it is my guess that she has no wish to mar his memory—agh.” With a small, stressed groan, Alphinaud lets his forehead go thunk against the hard wood of the table. “I am babbling. In truth, Y’shtola, it is my fear that she will not open up to anyone less than Minfilia or Thancred, since she holds them in such high regard... and we have yet to find them.”

“I’ve been doing my best too, but it’s like she’s doing her best to be too busy to think about it,” Tataru contributes.

Y’shtola leans back in her seat, tapping her thumb against her chin. “Another sort to throw herself into her work to avoid feeling, eh? Who does that remind me of...”

-

A breakthrough comes with the news that a Student of Baldesion does indeed survive—something Aldera had quite forgotten about in the wake of the banquet and her fight to aid Ishgard. Krile, she remembers, but there is no time (there is never time): Aymeric has need of her and of Alphinaud. She undertakes the task of escorting Lucia to parley with the Dravanians with marked relief. The Rising Stones and Ishgard have both felt a tad cloying, even with all her endeavors into new hobbies. 

It may just be that she has never been one to stay in one place. From childhood, Aldera has seen much, albeit from the deck of a ship with a mop in hand.

She did take well to adventuring. After all, the most difference between what she had already been doing and the new endeavor she undertook was that she would be traveling explicitly with the aim of experiencing new things. To say that she got more than she bargained for would be an understatement.

“How fare you?” Lucia asks quietly on the airship.

And Aldera says “I fare,” because it is the truth.

Lucia tilts her head back to watch the sky. “Count Fortemps bade you come to visit when you are able. He would see his daughter know she is welcome.”

“Is that so?” Aldera whispers.

Her charge glances at her with sharpness—then her eyes soften in understanding. “He does not blame you. Be at peace.”

“Well... my thanks.” 

-

Thancred can see full well that Aldera is changed the moment he catches sight of her. Though she is clearly perturbed by those so-called Warriors of Darkness, there is something beneath that that he knows—no less than a bone-deep pain. He fully intends to speak with her when they each have a spare moment—truly, he does, and he manages to pull her aside one evening while they rest at Fortemps Manor, but Aldera looks him in the eye, then lowers her head.

“We haven’t found her,” Aldera says softly. “I’m sorry.”

And Thancred pauses—because surely not. She couldn’t be using the matter of Minfilia’s continued absence to deflect from whatever it is that troubles her.

“I thought you should know. She heard Hydaelyn’s voice—said she had to go back to you and Y’shtola, and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Though you know far more of these matters than I, it seems reasonable enough to assume that she, too, was caught up in the Flow spell—”

“Aldera?” Alphinaud. Thancred mentally curses the boy’s sense of timing. “You’re needed.”

She nods, sending Thancred an apologetic look as she hurries away, and he watches her go with a brimming frustration in his chest. 

-

.

Aldera proves elusive after that, as if she can sense his intent and wants nothing to do with it—admittedly a state of affairs he has occasionally run into when wooing a lady, but he is decidedly not doing that this time, as he finds the lack of brightness in her eyes more concerning than he does compelling. They can all sense the way she’s drifting. Why, though, rather escapes him.

Until he starts listening to the rumors.

He had known, of course, that Aldera was close to Lord Haurchefant on a level beyond her usual habit of charming leaders into adoring her. Alphinaud had informed him of Lord Haurchefant’s untimely passing. But these two facts do not click together until he spends an evening in the Forgotten Knight with some reading he’s been putting off and a rather strong drink—strong enough that he nearly misses the rather pretty Elezen lady at the nearby table lean in conspiratorially to meet her two friends’ gazes and say—well, apparently be in the middle of saying—”Of course, to _my_ eye, the Warrior was in love with Lord Greystone. Had it not been for his passing, I wager we might’ve been hearing wedding bells sooner rather than later.”

Thancred pauses.

Ignoring the jagged shard of _something_ that seems to have implanted itself into his chest, he finds that the supposition makes sense. Before the banquet in Ul’dah, she was frequently popping away (as their work allowed) to Coerthas and Camp Dragonhead on “personal business”, which for Aldera usually only means that she has picked up a variety of odd jobs in the area that the smallfolk need doing, and she will spend some days singlehandedly solving the problems of everyone in the region before returning with several new buckets of dye to be stored in her room at the Rising Stones. She’s a quiet girl, quieter than most, and they had all been terribly busy, so when she had returned one day with a face flushed with happiness and a new pendant about her neck, he’d scarcely had time to tease her about it before Minfilia had need of her for a mission.

He returns to Fortemps Manor rather late, deep in thought, to find Y’shtola waiting for him. She tilts her head. “Let’s talk.”

“After all these years? I’m honored, truly,” Thancred says, dry.

Y’shtola does not roll her eyes, but he can tell she would very much like to, and in his books that’s as good as a success. “Outside.”

“But it’s _cold,”_ he starts, only for her to grab him by the ear and haul him out with her. “Ow ow ow, Y’shtola, I’m going, I’m going!”

In a rare act of mercy she releases him. They fall into a silence as she leads him a little ways away from the manor to a little garden area with stone benches—he wagers that they would be far more comfortable under the direct sun—and turns to him with arms crossed. “Aldera.”

“What about her?” Thancred knows damn well what about, but—still.

Y’shtola frowns. “You attempted to speak with her, did you not?”

“And I hardly got a word in edgewise before she told me of Minfilia’s fate.” He crosses his arms in turn. “She was hoping to distract me, and I’ve not been able to speak with her since. So if you were hoping I would be able to get anything out of her on the matter of Lord Haurchefant’s passing, well, I’m sorry to disappoint.”

His tone earns him a raised brow. “Hoping, no. Expecting—yes, I was. I take it you have managed to find an answer as to what ails her?”

“Not from the lady herself, but yes. Word round Ishgard is that the two were in love.” 

She gives him a long, undecipherable, and most of all unnerving look, but before he can open his mouth to say something so stupid that it will inevitably distract her, she nods. “To hear the tale from Alphinaud’s perspective, that seems to have been the case. But he refuses to speak of the manner of Lord Haurchefant’s passing on account of it not being his story to tell. Meanwhile, Aldera refuses to speak to anyone at all, and appears to be doing her utmost to bury herself in an avalanche of work. I am concerned.”

“As am I,” Thancred admits quietly. “But no one can force her bare her heart unless she wills it. You do remember how long it took for her to open up to us?”

“...Aye, I do.” Y’shtola does not appear too pleased by the reminder, however. After that first day Aldera had lapsed into muteness, answering questions with a nod or shake of the head and scribbling out more complicated answers on that hand-bound notebook she kept with her at all times, and it had not been until after she defeated Titan that she graced them with her voice again. It was a curious trait, one with more downsides than benefits, but it had been easy enough to see that she was hardly doing it to be difficult. 

With her natural inclination to be taciturn, it is all too easy to forget how young Aldera truly is. 

He looks up at the night sky and the cold moon overhead. “Forcing the matter at this juncture may do more harm than good. That being said... I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Good,” she says. She turns to leave. Thancred can see that her tail is fluffed up.

With a smirk, he keeps pace with her. “Cold?”

“No,” Y’shtola lies, her ears pressing back as her tail flicks in annoyance.

-

“...As Thancred must be. He watched over her from the first—long before me. And he will watch over her until the last,” F’lhaminn says, and though it is not the first time Aldera has felt that disquieting, sharp flash of _something_ rip through her, it is the first time she has felt anything so keenly since that terrible moment—since the sound of metal shattering hit her horns. F’lhaminn peers at her. “Is aught well, Aldera, dear?”

Aldera quickly nods, and gestures for them to go on without her. Her tail flicks in the direction of the Arcanist Guild’s door as she inclines her head to indicate she’s headed that way.

“Ah, business in the Arcanist’s Guild, eh?” Hoary laughs.

Another nod. _Please leave,_ she thinks, despite her gladness at the sight of them, and Coultenet (thank the Twelve) gets the hint. He hurries them along. The three disappear quickly into Limsa Lominsa’s crowds. Aldera does not watch them go, instead turning the opposite way and walking as fast as her feet will allow her, until she reaches the less full parts of the city and breaks into a run.

There is too much. Too much of _everything._ So Aldera runs, until she is well out of the city and far into the provinces of La Noscea, pushing through the humid air and the burning of her lungs to run and run and run until her legs refuse to run any further and she falls to the grassy ground near the bluff of a cliff, panting and blessedly thoughtless. But eventually higher thought returns, as it always must, and she sits up and takes in the sight of the Salt Strand below her.

She is hot and sweaty and her throat is ragged with the harshness of her breath, even in this moist climate. Even now, her chest is heaving, and she can tell she’s going to have to spend some time attending to its upkeep and care before the inevitable next battle if she doesn’t want to be regretting her life for the duration of said battle. 

But, for a mercy, she is completely alone.

The only ghosts to haunt her here are those of the people she met working on ships—travelers, merchants, mercenaries. Nobody she shared a personal connection with. Nobody following after her every move with ill-concealed worry.

She stretches out. She rests.

Just one small moment in time.

-

.

“Minfilia,” Aldera whispers as the Word of the Mother regards her warmly. She reaches out with one hand, and the Word only smiles. “The others—they’ll want to see you—”

But the Word shakes her head, and Aldera’s heart cracks open again as Hydaelyn’s voice echoes from Minfilia’s lips. “More will be lost, o Warrior, ere the tide of the Calamitous flood is turned. Thou has lost much where the choice of the lost would have been otherwise. This my Word agreed to knowingly—grieve not.”

She feels ice creep over her heart. _Not Minfilia,_ the much-ignored selfish part of her cries, thinking of her friend’s wisdom and insight, how she had been one of the few to know what it was to hold the Echo—but she nods anyways.

What else can she do?

Hydaelyn speaks, and Aldera Lightwing is bound to listen. Thus it is that she is the one who hears the missing piece to the puzzle that is the motivation of the Ascians to sow chaos and destruction as they do, and thus it is that she is the one who bears news of Minfilia’s fate back to her fellow Scions, and thus it is that she is the one to see the faces of her allies fall in devastation and grief. But it’s Thancred Aldera watches most carefully. She had a feeling that things would turn out this way, and though she is not privy to Thancred’s history with Minfilia, it was plain to see how dear to each other they were—and indeed, the pain in his eyes is an echo of what lingers in her.

When Matoya opens her mouth to say precisely the wrong thing, when the others storm out in response and leave her and Alphinaud inside the cave, Aldera winces.

But Matoya is not the only one to bear the brunt of the grief her friends feel anew. Aldera approaches Thancred as he broods surprisingly near the cave entrance, only for him to look up at her with the one good eye, so many things churning in it that she knows she has already made her mistake. “Was there truly _nothing_ you could do? Did you not _hear_ me when I said _whatever it took?”_

She freezes—freezes, and fails utterly to respond. He stands and towers over her.

“You couldn’t have—grabbed her, or—” Thancred gestures with his hands, takes her by the shoulders, shakes her a little, “perhaps used those lovely crystals of yours to make some kind of a difference—to pull her from the sea, lend her power that she might maintain her form? Is the Echo truly so useless?”

Aldera opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

His voice rises as he continues. “She deserves better than to be whisked away without any hope of rescue, particularly after you promised—you, the _Warrior—”_

“I know,” Aldera finally manages to whisper. The quaver in her voice stops him cold. “I know.” She rips herself from his grip and takes one step back, and then another, and then two more, until she turns tail and runs headlong into the woods, and Thancred is left with Krile and Y’shtola staring disapprovingly at his head and too much turmoil in his heart. He curses under his breath and stalks away in the opposite direction, fully intending to find a suitable location to get so soused he forgets his own name.

-

The next time Thancred sees Aldera—at the Rising Stones—he is sitting at the bar, chatting with F’lhaminn, and she strides in with her usual air of businesslike professionalism. Only it’s wrong, tight and controlled in a way Aldera is not, and as she turns her head to scan the room he opens his mouth to greet her—perhaps begin by reaching out halfway—

—and Aldera’s piercing eyes look directly through him, as if he is not even there.

His mouth stays halfway open as she turns to speak to Tataru, brisk and busy, and he nearly forgets to shut it. To cover it he takes a hearty swig from his tankard, but it’s a weak cover and he knows it.

“Thancred,” F’lhaminn says, almost wondering, “did you finally break her heart outright?”

He chokes on his mead. “W-What?!”

“Oh—” F’lhaminn looks remarkably sorry for a woman who knows exactly what she just did. “Oh, _Thancred.”_

“To be absolutely frank, my dear,” he gets out once he’s expunged the mead from his airways, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her ears twitch. “Now this changes things. I thought you knew.”

“Knew. What,” Thancred grits out with a strained smile that he knows does not remotely resemble anything other than a grimace.

“Well, I suppose if what I’ve heard about that Ishgardian knight of hers is true, it doesn’t make any difference now,” she muses, wiping the remains of Thancred’s drink from the bar counter. He twitches. When will that thrice-bedamned knight stop coming up—“She was quite taken with you in the beginning, sweetheart. You should have seen her eyes following you around the room! And you can’t have failed to notice how she hung on your every word, and took you quite seriously. But I suppose she saw your behavior with your, ah, admirers and opted for caution... Thancred?”

He stands. It’s too abrupt, but his composure is damn near in tatters, and he’s hardly interested in hurting yet another person he cares about. “My apologies, fair lady, but I just remembered an urgent matter I need to attend to. I shall call upon your culinary expertise another day.”

“Do be careful,” F’lhaminn calls after him.

-

Not that either of them have been having a great time, recently, but when Aldera emerges out of the snows to hand hi-potions over to the two unfortunate heretics he’s gone and saved as his good deed for the day, Thancred nearly winces. She’s got an almost mulish look on her face, her lips pressed thin and her eyes narrowed (though that might be against the cold, come to think of it, but—), and she turns to him and holds out her notebook.

_Emmanellain is even more insufferable than usual and I have not the patience to humor him. The fop founders his duties and passes them to us. If he manages to do damage to the peace conference through his incompetence I should hardly be surprised._

“We’re in full agreement, milady,” Thancred says. Some on-edge part of him notes that it is the first time she has approached him since that ill-fated trip to old Matoya’s cave, but the rest of him is busy thinking about the irritation that lies ahead. He hands the notebook back to her while the two heretics look on curiously. “I’ll keep an eye out for what I may. In the mean time... would you consent to assisting me in guiding these two back to the Falcon’s Nest?”

Aldera nods, already moving to where her black chocobo sits gamely next to the road to fish winter coats out of her saddlebags and hand them over to the awed heretics, and Thancred recognizes the crest of House Fortemps on the chocobo’s accoutrement, and abruptly he realizes that yet another rumor about Aldera and Lord Haurchefant has proven true: he gifted her with a black chocobo to serve as her steed.

_An entire chocobo,_ he thinks to himself, sour.

He categorically refuses to examine why that bothers him as much as it does.

-

.

If you ask her, Emmanellain deserves the punch he provokes Thancred into throwing at him. And a few more. Perhaps a full beating—it certainly seemed to work for the career sailors that got too big for their britches or were incompetent enough to actively inhibit the function of the charter ships she worked. She glares at the boy when he looks woefully up at her. He’s cradling his jaw. It looks like it hurts.

Good.

“You’ve known laughably little of hardship,” she tells him in a voice like ice, barely containing her own seething anger. “Your refusal to learn does dishonor to your name. And to Ishgard.”

Before she can do something worse than Thancred already has, she forces herself to leave, flexing her fingers. Only a few paces away from the Falcon’s Nest is a large mound of snow she had been eyeing while aiding him in returning the heretics to hearth and inn room. Aldera takes a breath as she looks upon it now, and ignoring the worried nudge her Titan-Egi in carbuncle form gives her, she sprints and throws herself headlong into the snow.

It’s cold. Aldera grabs fistfuls of it—tries to, anyways, and her arms fall in until the snow is inches above her elbows. She buries her head directly in it and lets out a hiss of rage, her tail flicking back and forth as she forcibly keeps her body still and breathes in and out. What she has buried beneath the surface is threatening to come to the forefront. 

_I have work to do,_ she thinks unhappily.

“...Aldera?”

Thancred. He sounds... calmer. Not that she believes it. She twists her head to look at him, tail still flicking, and he wisely takes a step back. _I am busy,_ she thinks as she glowers.

“...Can I ask...”

Aldera turns her face back to the snow.

“Oh, enough of this,” Thancred decides, pulling her back by the nape of her collar and turning her to face him. “You’ll catch your death of cold if this is how you sulk, you know.”

She gives his bare arms a pointed look.

“That’s different.”

Aldera raises her brows.

Thancred frowns. “It is. At any rate, I assume Emmanellain got to you, too?”

_“Got to me,”_ she mutters, her voice acidic. “I hope to have gotten to _him,_ but I hold no true expectation of such.”

“So you had words for him as well?” At his question she grows quiet, perhaps remembering that she has been avoiding him outside of work since her venture into the Antitower and his grieved outburst. She digs in the rucksack she keeps at her side for her notebook. He stops her by putting a hand on her shoulder. She looks up, wary. “Humor me with your voice, darling. It’s been too long.”

She looks away. “And what of yours?”

“What do you mean?” he ripostes.

When she looks up at him again, it’s with a keen eye—one that sees too far into him. “Emmanellain knows nothing of you... and your failures.”

“I certainly did not _err_ in speaking,” Thancred starts.

“Minfilia made her own choice.”

Thancred stares.

Aldera lifts her chin. “You can be angry at me,” she says, quietly, in such a tone that he feels quite like a louse, “and I would even deserve it, because you entrusted her care to me, and I failed to protect her. But you blame yourself for enough. Not that, Thancred. Not when she chose with full knowledge of what was to come.”

For once, he is speechless.

“I will return to Ishgard and report to the Lord Commander. Meet me there when you’re ready.” With that Aldera releases the teleport spell she had been building—one he clearly hadn’t noticed, damn his disrupted aether—and he watches in silence as her magic swallows her up and she disappears.

Thancred looks at the snowbank she had been busy burying herself in. “I think I understand why she chose you,” he says to it, and moves to sit down out of sight from the road, behind a tree, and puts his head in his hands.

-

Y’shtola takes note of his disquiet near as soon as he returns to the Holy See, and thus it is that he regards her brisk entrance to his rooms with little surprise. He stops slouching in the desk chair—she hates that, and her eyes will keep judging if he keeps slouching, irritating both of them—and gives her a wave. “Hello, Y’shtola. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Primarily, I would seek your thoughts on the current state of the primal threat, given our intelligence.” She pauses. “But you are troubled. Speak, then.”

“It’s about more than Haurchefant,” Thancred says, feeling weariness seep into his body and voice alike.

Y’shtola frowns and gestures for him to go on.

He sighs. “I—well, I—suffice it to say words were exchanged after a bit of light pressing, and we were both under duress. I gleaned from that conversation the little tidbit that she seems to think we blame her for what happened. To Minfilia.”

“Fool girl,” she mutters. She turns her sightless gaze on him. “And fool _you._ Did you not apologize for your outburst after we learned of Minfilia’s fate?”

Thancred remains silent.

“Idiot.”

“I’m well aware. Thank you, Y’shtola.” He scrubs his hand down his face. He could say he tried, but he’s well aware that merely trying does not amount to anything.

She crosses her arms and props up one leg over the other knee. “Well, I cannot get you out of a mess that you handily put yourself in. It seems to me, however, that this time—” he winces, “—there is a way to begin making amends fairly easily.” The pause is for good effect, he knows. “Apologize.”

“I will,” Thancred mutters.

Y’shtola inclines her head. “Now. Your thoughts on the primals?”

“Well...”

-

“We need to talk,” Thancred says when she returns to Fortemps Manor after attending to other business. His tone is gruff. He catches her by the arm before she can pass him by, and Aldera cannot quite help the way her tail twitches and flicks. She hesitates for long enough that he swallows and says, “Please.”

She breathes in. And then out.

“Okay,” she whispers.

He leads her to a secluded piece of scaffolding near the wall of the Brume in silence, and the part of her that has grown used to betrayal wonders if perhaps he intends to push her off—but it wouldn’t be like him to use so overt a method when something like poison would suffice—and her worries are not exactly allayed by his refusal to look at her. Instead he turns to watch the dim glow of the guard towers, malms away from the city proper, and lets her stew in her worry. His shoulders are tense—his whole body is tense. Like he’s about to give her something he has no desire to give.

“...I’m sorry,” he says finally. Clipped and strained, but clear.

She heard him, but—”What?”

“I’m sorry,” Thancred repeats, turning to her. His good eye bores into her with a rare intensity. “It seems I have... allowed you to labor under the misapprehension that I am holding a grudge against you for what happened to Minfilia. Not so. But more than that—I did not treat you as befits a valued friend, lashing out at you as I did. I am sorry.”

Aldera opens and closes her mouth several times. She grasps for something to say and finds nothing at hand. Thancred stands silently, as if waiting, and as she looks at him further she realizes he expects to be lambasted, and as is the case all too often, she feels a pang inside her chest. Not this, she had told him, and he took it upon himself to further hold himself accountable for that which needed no reckoning.

Yes, he is mortal indeed.

“We were all under duress,” she manages. “Don’t—don’t worry about it.”

But her voice cracks, and he’d have to be a fool not to hear it. He steps forward, closer, not seeming bothered by how far he has to look down to keep her gaze. “Aldera,” he says, almost gently, “I hurt you.”

She surprises herself with the laugh that escapes her—hard, bitter, and aching—and looks away, crossing her arms to hold herself by her forearms, clenching tight as always. The dull warning from her senses of too much keeps her grounded. “I am quite used to being hurt.”

“I would be surprised if you weren’t by now,” he says with some dryness. But then he shakes his head and gestures for her to take a seat, doing so himself, and when she reluctantly acquiesces he gamely folds himself up to give her room. It’s almost comical how effectively he manages to compress his large build, leaning forward with his arms hung loosely over his knees. “You’ve endured much in recent days, no? You have lost new friends... and a lover.”

Aldera finds herself absently pinching the side of her arm and forces herself to stop. She doesn’t want to do this—doesn’t want to hear it from Thancred of all people—but if she left now, it would upset their careful balance in a way she knows she wants even less than the awkward experience of speaking of your first lover with your first... your first...

Your first Thancred. There. There, she decides. She refuses to categorize him.

“Yes,” she says.

Sitting back against the wall like this, she can’t see his expression when he speaks. “I am sorry,” he murmurs, “that we were not there to support you. And I’m sure that Y’shtola and I having been absent for so long does not make it easier to entrust us with your sorrows. But if nothing else—” he pauses. “If nothing else, be honest with yourself. And know that I am aware I have lost some degree of your trust.”

“You haven’t—” Aldera starts to protest.

Quick as a whip, Thancred turns to put a hand on her shoulder, and she instinctively flinches back. He smiles, but it’s sad. “I have. Don’t push yourself to accept an apology that you cannot.”

“But...” She shakes her head. “But I want to. I didn’t _not_ mean what I said.”

He takes that in. Assesses it.

“I might be hurt,” she says pointedly, “but I’m not devastated.” Not about him being an arse in a moment of weakness, anyways. “Besides. You’ve apologized. That’s a start.”

“...A start,” Thancred agrees, the still-tense set of his shoulders relaxing a tad.

She keeps her eyes fixed on the stars. “For the record... if you have need of me, and I am nowhere to be found... I have a room in the Topmast. In the Mist.”

“Oh?” He gives her a curious look, she can see it out of the corner of her eye, and she knows—she knows it’s unexpected.

So she nods. “I’ve a friend nearby. When I need a break—or when... well, I spend a fair amount of time there, at any rate. So. You have permission.”

“Is this a measure of trust?” he asks pointedly, but he’s smiling. Aldera nods again. “Duly noted. I will endeavor not to unduly impose upon you.”

The small platform feels even smaller, and she abruptly decides she’s done here. She rises. “If that’s all, I’llbegoingnowbye!”

His gaze follows her as she hurries away—near runs, so stifled had she felt—and she smacks her own forehead to try to rid herself of the phantom sensations of his emotions filtering in to her from her horns. It doesn’t work, because she can feel his confusion, and only when she rounds the corner does Aldera do it again, her face hot with embarrassment. 

She is never getting herself in that situation again. Not if she can help it, anyways.

-

Thancred watches the Lord Commander’s face brighten when Aldera consents to fight by his side and finds his eye twitching. Is every bleeding remotely available head of state in love with the girl? Does she have any idea? His guess is no, judging by the relaxed set to her shoulders as she happily (or what passes as happy for her, anyways) converses with the man, and really, he has better things he could be doing that are not watching high-ranking politicians fall all over themselves to please her, but he can’t seem to stop watching. F’lhaminn’s words echo in his head: _She was quite taken with you..._

Aldera? Taken with _him. Aldera._ The slip of a girl who’d defeated Ifrit in the absence of his protection. The girl who saved him from Lahabrea, who excised the Ascian from him and then miraculously bore him out of the Praetorium. Who ensured that he lived another day past that inglorious night. Aldera, entirely too clever and skilled and _good_ for the likes of him—

“Gods help me, I think it might be love,” he finds himself saying to Aldera in disbelief, ruthlessly pressing the rising panic back down somewhere deep, deep inside of him and focusing on the way she tilts her head in confusion. Confusion! Good. He can work with confusion. “The Lord Commander, Aldera. The way he was looking at you—”

She shakes her head, though her cheeks darken in that telltale deep blue flush, and she scribbles something hurriedly in her notebook. _Aymeric sees actions done in service to Ishgard and admires them. It is not me he favors, but what I have done for his country._

Thancred’s brows raise at this cynical assessment—perhaps Alphinaud’s inherent skepticism of political entities has rubbed off on her—and he hands the notebook back to her. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Mayhaps you did not notice how his eyes lit up when you nodded.”

_Why are you so sour? We have work to do._

“Ah, yes,” he says in mock thought. “I’m sure Hilda will be most interested to hear of Ser Aymeric’s wish to poach her watch for the tournament.”

Aldera frowns at him.

“Who’s sour now?” He flashes her a quick, teasing smile, because she is giving him a look he is well used to, and because he actually does have reason to talk to Hilda beyond pretending to flirt with her, and he departs the premises of the Congregation.

-

He doesn’t expect to see Aldera scarcely thirty minutes later, even if she is only delivering Hilda a note and not intending to speak with him. She has that same look from before on her face as she takes in the scene before her. Thancred struggles not to laugh when she gives Hilda a questioning look, as if to ask if he’s bothering her.

“Love, you’re terribly communicative and all for someone who doesn’t take much to speaking, but I don’t know what that means,” Hilda drawls.

Thancred smiles, stepping forward to put a hand on Aldera’s shoulder. “She’s asking if I’m causing you any undue irritation.”

“Oh.” Hilda laughs. She puts a hand on her hip, then pounds her chest with one fist and a light smile as she looks at the girl. “Darlin’, I’d punt his ass into the stratosphere if he tried anything. Don’t worry yourself.”

Aldera nods in understanding, her eyes creasing at the corners, and Thancred has the distinct feeling of being bullied as she turns to him with that judgmental face. Furrowed brows accompanied by thinned lips—like he’s a misbehaving pet. He widens his eyes and blinks as coquettishly as he can, hoping to make her smile. “Don’t look at me like that. I will begin my search in due time.”

She raises an unimpressed brow.

“Aldera,” Thancred says, a note of pleading in his voice, “come now.”

Success: she rolls her eyes and turns to leave, ignoring him as she nods to Hilda and her people. Thancred watches her go and nearly jumps when Hilda makes a low, keen noise of understanding, drawing his attention back to her. She’s looking him over with a raised brow of her own and a smile that’s uncomfortably perceptive for how little they know of each other. “Seems like she’s got your measure, eh. Who’d’ve thought the great Archon spymaster so transparent?”

“Transparent?”

“Maybe not to a passerby,” Hilda amends, which does something for his wounded pride, at least—pride which is quickly wounded further when she practically leers at him. “You do know she’s still half in love with that highborn knight who died to protect her, don’tcha? She keeps vigil at his grave whenever she comes through.”

“I’m well aware,” he says evenly. He crosses his arms. “It’s only been moons since it happened, to my understanding, and she’s scarce given herself time to grieve. Suffice it to say if my antics can do anything to cheer her up, I see no reason not to. As a _friend.”_

She smirks. “Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. But that’s where my limit is, bein’ a bystander to it and all. Let’s get back to business an’ have ourselves a little talk about what our people can do for each other.”

-

.

The Gates of Judgment are as cold and unforgiving as they ever are, but Thancred makes for a halfway decent wind shield while they wait for the appointed hour—a fact that seems to amuse him to no end, and the Ishgardian contingent besides, as Aldera keeps standing directly behind his tall frame and moving him every time the wind shifts. He twists around to look at her and she bats at his shoulder to turn him back around. To the side, Aymeric stifles laughter. 

“Is this truly necessary?” Thancred asks, a note of resignation in his voice. Her tail flicks. Though his head is turned away from her, he sighs. “Don’t flick your tail at me.”

Aldera sticks out her tongue, though he can’t see it, and when the cold hits it she quickly hides it back in the safe harbor of her mouth. Aymeric loses the battle to maintain Ishgardian propriety and near-outright snickers. She looks at him with a pout as he grins down at her. “Friend, should I call for some furs for you? I find myself all the more impressed that you have done such feats for our nation if the cold affects you so severely.”

“I’ll be fine if Thancred _stops moving,”_ Aldera says mulishly.

Thancred gasps in mock outrage. _“You’re_ the one moving _me,_ my lady! I am taking no such initiative. Might I remind you of the cake incident—the many cake incidences—”

“That was your tribute,” she says, arch. The outrage Thancred voices in a wordless noise is not mock, this time.

Emmanellain looks between them, blinking, and after a moment ventures the question. “...Cake incident? Incidences?”

“Though she fancies it a well-kept secret,” Thancred says, spinning to face him, raising one finger to the sky as he places a hand on his hip, “our Lady Lightwing here is possessed of a voracious sweet tooth matched perhaps only by a gobbue—these are steel-toed, Aldera,” he says smugly when she tries to stomp on his boot. “Why, no matter the hour, should any Scion dare to consume any sort of sweet on the premises of the Rising Stones, ‘tis inevitable that the Warrior here will suddenly and conveniently be present, silently demanding a portion. It is my personal belief that _this_ is what fuels her martial might—”

“Thancred!” Aldera exclaims, doing her level best to shut him up and failing miserably as he holds her off with his palm pushing against her forehead. “Enough out of you! What nonsense—take greater care or I shall find a way to punch through that steel!”

He laughs. “You’ll have to catch me first!”

With that he takes off down the stairs, into the snows of the central highlands, Aldera in aggrieved pursuit. Aymeric stares after them, thoughtful. “Interesting...”

“My lord?” Lucia asks.

“Oh—” Aymeric startles, turning to Lucia and Emmanellain as if he had quite forgotten they were there. He shakes his head. “No, ‘tis nothing. His chosen solution to his colleague’s discomfort was to inspire her to motion, rather than leave her in uncomfortable stillness. Perhaps I ought to have thought of that myself.”

But as he turns back to the snows, watching his dear friend chase her colleague around with vigor fueled by the sort of upset that can only be brought on by the light offense of a comrade of many years, the discomfit in his chest sits in tandem with the quiet realization that this is the first time he has seen Aldera so animated since before Haurchefant’s death. 

He crosses his arms. In truth, while he is well aware of his own feelings and the growing warmth which bid him invite her for a drink after all is said and done, and those feelings are themselves now beset by the creeping awareness that her attentions were never set in his direction to begin with—and even should they have been possibly turned to him, the timing is simply mismatched—to see her active and emotive quells a worry that has been a constant since she stood in his office and swore to have Zephinien’s head under the light of the dying sun.

It is good, he decides, to see that even when she departs Ishgard, there will be those with a care for her.

“Moons have passed,” Emmanellain muses quietly, so quietly he surely did not intend for others to hear, “and this is what draws the old girl out of mourning.”

-

She can feel in her very sinews that events are coming to a head. After the peace conference Thancred departs to investigate a hunch he will say little and less about, citing only his urgency and the need for secrecy, and Krile and Y’shtola head off to Idyllshire to meet Cid and investigate some matter they, too, remain frustratingly vague about, but it can hardly be helped. Blessed Tataru remains a steady presence at the Forgotten Knight and Fortemps Manor, and Count Edmont dines with her and Alphinaud as part of a continuing series of dinners which he uses to plumb the depths of their memories for the sake of writing his memoirs.

Peace is present, but it is tense and ephemeral. It is the foreboding peace that precedes war or annihilation—not true peace.

From the moment Aymeric requests her and Alphinaud’s assistance in parleying with Hraesvelgr, she can focus on little else but that. Though she has grown more comfortable around Aymeric, she finds herself letting Alphinaud do the talking, and preoccupies herself with forging the path to Zenith for them, knowing full well that her companions are well capable on their own. But they let her do it. Only in the evenings does Alphinaud gently bully her into sitting by the fire and partaking of the meal, and distract her with conversation of all sorts—tactical moves, recounting their adventures, and Ishgardian history among them.

When they retire to their bedrolls, she dreams of the sea. Boundless blue, bright sunlight, and the smell of salt stinging her nostrils. Curious travelers gawking at her—at least until she took to hiding her tail beneath her smock and wearing a hood over her horns regardless of the heat, at which point they only looked at her askance and went about their business. 

Why her mind drifts to such mundanity she does not know. Wakefulness brings more recent memory with it, and that memory brings to her the urgency of purpose to see the nation Haurchefant loved so much saved, and the revelation of purpose brings her up short one night while on watch, because without realizing it she has set on the path to answering the question Ilberd put to her when they freed Raubahn: what does she fight for? Who does she fight for? 

She fights for love, or for the memory of it, though if she had a reason before she holds no certainty that it was a reason in truth and not mere impulse that drove her.

That lingering uncertainty remains just bespeaks the need to continue on. To put an end to this, to the Dragonsong, and in so doing perhaps the specter of Haurchefant that she holds close at hand will be loosed from her grasp... as well as that of so many others, a thousand generations of men and women and one eternal brood of dragons, whose collective blood could plain fill the vast abyss which separates the Holy See from the bulk of Coerthas.

Aldera puts her chin on her knees, watching the stars. She well knows that she cannot be selfish when she is the one holding the hopes of so many both dear to her and not, and that despite herself, her mourning of Haurchefant and her determination to save Estinien have both been well and truly selfish. Even if Alphinaud shares the selfsame hope—part of her cannot help but feel as if she ought to know better, and be the voice of reason that her usually self-possessed friend currently is not.

But in losing Haurchefant she discovered that she, too, cannot further countenance sacrificing their friends only to further their goals.

There will be time—not for the dead, but for her—to reconcile these things after Ishgard is saved.

And, she hopes, after Estinien is as well.

_For those we can yet save,_ she had told Alphinaud in the intercessory. _To help those in need._

Words not her own, but words she had deeply admired from the first, from the lips of an honorable man who dreamed of peace. Words she must be careful to honor in all truth.

-

.

Aldera feels battered beyond belief as she slowly makes her way back in to Ishgard after defeating Nidhogg and Estinien, as if her whole body has been used for target practice by a dragon. Which—that’s sort of exactly what happened, isn’t it? She laughs to herself, a soft, mirthless sound, and as she sets eyes on the aetheryte, she abruptly realizes that she cannot bear to be here right now. There is much she needs to consider that will be very difficult indeed to think about with the way her companions’ thoughts and feelings crowd in on her and beckon to her own being, some aetheric thread of connection demanding that she fix things, and it is with this thought in mind that she turns to the House Fortemps manservant who has just arrived at her side.

“Please tell the Count and Alphinaud that I have urgent business to attend to in Limsa Lominsa,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment. “I should be back ere the morning dawns on us—there is nothing to be concerned about.”

“Understood,” says the manservant. She thinks his name is Horzone, but he’d doubtless be embarrassed if she ventured to call him by name.

So instead she just gives him a small, exhausted smile. “My thanks. Please take care as you return to the manor.”

“I shall, Lady Lightwing.” With a bow, he leaves.

She only waits for a moment. Then she channels the currents and teleports to the Mist, where her apartment is tucked away on one of the middle floors of the Topmast, and once she has safely locked herself inside and pulled the curtains back to let some light in, she puts her things down and lays spread-eagled on the floor with a sad noise she dared not let escape while around her friends—who mean well, she knows, but it gets trying when every single person around you keeps too sharp an eye on you, as if the death of your lover is the very first loss you have felt in all the world...

Aldera curls on her side and then into a ball, draping her tail loosely across her hip as she does so. She thinks of what she saw wresting the Eyes from Estinien.

Haurchefant, smiling. Helping. Ysayle’s crinkled eyes.

One last gift to her and Alphinaud.

_Don’t stay here for my sake,_ she bids Haurchefant, if he’s here, if he’s listening, squeezing her eyes shut as she recalls the memory of his eyes looking upon her, full of love. _I will be alright, I promise. The song is at an end, and you need fear for your country no longer. I will miss you always—you knew me as none other did—but you, too, deserve your rest, my dear knight._

_My dear Haurchefant._

She only realizes that she is crying when the tears hit the fingertips that are not covered by her cheek. No response comes, of course, and she hadn’t truly expected one. 

But it would have been nice.

Aldera stays long enough on the floor that she drifts off to sleep and wakes sometime in the middle of the night with the kind of raspy throat one only gets after spending some time passed out in an unfavorable position. Wakefulness sees her to her bed and leaves as quickly as it came. She dreams of happier moments, suspended in time, when things were less complicated—when the weight of the world on her shoulders had not seemed quite so heavy, and the stares of all who knew of her not quite so expectant. 

-

Aymeric is kind, she thinks.

And Aldera is no fool—he is infatuated with her, or, at the very least, interested. It is incredibly flattering that such a man would take the effort to invite her to dinner. He stressed that he was inviting Lady Lightwing, daughter of House Fortemps, rather than the Warrior of Light, and as the evening goes on, she finds herself pleasantly surprised: he asks after her experiences, but more than that—he asks her thoughts on and reactions to them.

So when he asks her what she wants—not as a Scion, or the Warrior, but as Aldera—she gives it genuine thought. 

What does she want? She finds the question rather difficult, all things considered, and hums to let him know she’s still thinking. As she thinks of past, present, and future, she finds herself growing solemn. 

Taking a quick drink, she looks up at him, then down. “I... Well, in truth, for a good long while I thought only of vengeance. Forgive me for speaking plainly of this—Haurchefant, he... not only did I love him,” she admits quietly, “he was my first love. ‘Twas his love for Ishgard that kindled mine. Though my life now is full of intrigue, and I have long since passed the point of being new to acting on the international stage, it was not yet old to me when we met, and I had misgivings. About my role, about Eorzea, even about whether I was truly hearing the word of Hydaelyn and everyone hadn’t made a mistake somehow.” She smiles, a quick little half-twitch of the lips. “In knowing him, I grew—and found inspiration that led me to my own answers. His boundless support and optimism enabled me to become the person who had the strength to defeat Nidhogg.”

She finds herself unwilling to look at Aymeric and see his expression. “When we lost him, I understood Estinien and Nidhogg as I had not before. But I found my vengeance and then did not know what to do—so I resolved to defend Ishgard, and save who I could, because it was what he would have done. And now, for a time, at least, Ishgard is defended, and Nidhogg vanquished. But these are all impersonal things. So what do I want? For me?” 

Shaking her head, she can only give him a rueful look, and some part of her seizes at the sympathy on his face. “I know not, I am afraid. If you ask the Scion, the answer is defend Eorzea. If you ask the Warrior? The selfsame. But what Aldera Lightwing wants—that is my mystery, and a lifelong one at that, though my frivolous answer would be that right now, I would like for Tataru to create a stuffed obsidian Carbuncle modeled after Alphinaud’s.”

“It is easy to forget,” Aymeric observes with a brief acknowledging smile at her small joke, “that despite all you have seen and done, you have scarce crested the precipice of twenty winters. But, my friend, I would have you know that wanting things for yourself—be they small or large—is no evil. And if anyone has a right to speak plainly with me, it is you... so speak to me of Haurchefant, and I shall happily share my own knowledge, for he was as a brother to me.”

Aldera looks at him with surprise—but he is serious. Very much so.

His smile is wry, soft, and aching, and she swallows with sudden nerves as he opens his mouth to speak. “Of course, you need not if you are uncomfortable. After all, I am one among your many admirers, some of whom stand far closer to you than I. But it is my hope that beyond that delicate matter—”

“You are a dear friend to me,” Aldera says firmly, reaching out to clasp his hand before she remembers how short her arms are. Instead she tucks them into her lap and looks him in the eye. “Pray do not be so apologetic. Your feelings are not a burden to be secreted away. I am—I am quite flattered, in fact, though I do not know what you speak of in regards to other admirers, unless you mean the general regard—but regardless,” her face feels as if it is ablaze, as he looks at her with raised brows and a knowing smile, “I should be happy to speak of him with you—so long as you are truly at peace with it.”

Aymeric nods. “I am. Though I will admit your concern warms my heart.”

But before she can respond, a knight from House Fortemps brings ill tidings.

-

Events after that are a blurry chain, bound by crystals. Always, always crystals.

Ardbert is the Warrior of Darkness’s name—how she knows, she doesn’t know. But when he speaks of his pain, she feels a resonance beyond mere kinship, beyond empathy for the raw agony in his voice.

She feels it as if it is her own.

When they lock eyes, both their crystals glowing bright, she knows he understands it, too.

-

[ ](https://imgbb.com/)

Minfilia promises—promises to save the world of the First. Then she drifts to Aldera and embraces her, the aetherial manifestation of the woman as solid as when she had been full flesh and blood, and she leans in and puts her lips at Aldera’s ear. “Dear friend,” she whispers in her own voice and not Hydaelyn’s, whispers words only for Aldera to hear, “pray do not let fear hold you back from happiness. The both of you are dear to me, you know.”

“But—” Aldera turns her head into Minfilia’s neck, throwing her arms around her and holding tight. She squeezes her eyes shut. None other would be able to get this out of her, but Minfilia can surely feel how hot her face is, and she knows Thancred can read lips and Alisaie’s hearing is uncommonly sharp, so she thinks it instead, sure that she will hear it. _But... he loves_ you. _And I—Haurchefant—_

She can sense her friend’s surprised gaze on her hair. Then Minfilia laughs, her own grip tightening, and tears spring to Aldera’s eyes at how real it looks and feels, how Minfilia’s body appears solid and alive as she dissolves into peals of delighted merriment that echo through the aetherial sea. Over her shoulder, Aldera watches the the Warriors of Darkness watch them—and she feels the way Thancred looks at them, at Minfilia, with barely concealed yearning. As if nothing is more important than the scene in front of him. “Oh, Aldera, it is not as you assume.” Lowering her voice again, she smiles into Aldera’s hair and whispers. “You heard me speak of fatherly love and still you think him spoken for? When you are ready, talk to each other. Without pretenses, and without hiding, as you both are wont to. I would celebrate my friends when I return.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Aldera whispers back.

Minfilia withdraws. She brushes her thumb over Aldera’s cheek. “Good girl.”

-

When all is said and done, she sees Alisaie and Urianger off, and then she is alone. Though Aldera makes the basic self-preserving move of venturing out of sight of the Amal’jaa guarding the gate, she ends up sitting on the ground and simply staring at the sky for longer than she cares to admit.

_Minfilia,_ she thinks. And then she remembers what Minfilia said, and she hides her face in her hands, thinking again _Minfilia!—_ her mental voice far more scandalized. Oh, she’d had a sweet spot for Thancred from the beginning, ‘tis true, but work ever comes first, and in the Scions she has found bonds she never expected to forge to such depths or breadths, not when she had led such an isolated life before any of this. Bonds she dare not strain by the awkward rejection (not unlike what she did to Aymeric, really) that is sure to ensue should she make such overtures. Besides.

Besides...

Aldera curls into herself, wrapping her tail beneath her legs, and sighs. After a moment she gives it up and stands. “No use sticking around.”

The teleportation spell takes the same five seconds it always does, but this time, it feels like an eternity.

-

She spends about two days in Ishgard wrapping up some business. Aymeric is unfortunately away, and even if he were in the city, their duties would likely not allow them to finish their previous talk. She dines with Artoirel, Emmanellain, and Lord Edmont, apprising them of what has occurred, and finds a suspicious amount of sweets carefully bundled up in her room when she retires to bed. 

When she corners Emmanellain over it later, he only shrugs with an unassailable smile. “What, old girl? How else am I to protect my cakes?”

“I ought to seek yours out specifically,” she mutters without heat. He just laughs.

On her way out of the city to further check on the state of things in the central highlands before returning to Revenant’s Toll, she makes a detour east.

His grave is the same, although the world has changed. Aldera stands before it with her head bowed and murmurs a brief prayer. She kneels to touch the stone, to trace the letters of his name, and when she stands and turns to go, she nearly has a heart attack at the sight of the figure standing silently in the snow. “Thancred?!”

“And here I was warned that you were like to spend the entire day here,” Thancred says, crossing his arms.

Aldera feels—defensive, she realizes, tense and on edge, aware of every nerve ending in her body, and she doesn’t know why. She breathes out and flexes her fingers, but it only helps a little bit. “Has aught occurred in my absence? Am I needed?”

“No, no.” He waves the concern off. As he makes his way through the snows to her his boots audibly crunch—something that he was _not_ doing before, so likely he’s only doing it to comfort her. He comes to stand at her side and looks down at the grave and the shield. “I’d have contacted you via linkpearl if that were the case. Alphinaud merely got impatient and wished for someone to collect you, so I volunteered.”

“...But you can’t teleport,” she points out.

Thancred gives her a droll look. “And that’s why.”

“I—” She blinks. Relaxes. “Oh.”

“I thought you might appreciate some time,” he says quietly.

Aldera smiles, though it is a bittersweet thing. “Yes... yes, I do. Thank you, Thancred.”

“How are you faring?” When she looks at him in a silent request for clarification, he points with his chin in the direction of the grave.

She swallows through the sudden lump in her throat and lowers her gaze to her boots. “I...”

“Don’t tell me how you _ought_ to feel,” he says, still so gentle. “There is no ought. And it is my understanding that—the business of remonstrating the archbishop aside—between ending the Dragonsong and investigating the Warriors of Darkness, you’ve allowed yourself precious little space to breathe and to grieve.”

Her heart beats with a loudness in her chest that she mislikes. Squeezing her eyes shut only makes it louder, so she opens them again and finds her gaze fixing on the hole in the shield. The memories are still so vivid in her mind’s eye—so are the words of his personal creed, which she has so oft repeated to inspire others in the moons since. With a self-conscious awareness of how she has begun to tremble she wraps her arms around herself and squeezes, trying to regain control, but Thancred makes a tutting noise and takes her wrists in his hands. She breathes in, sharp.

Thancred’s gaze is steady. Compassionate. “None of that, now.”

“I _have to,”_ she starts to argue in a cracking voice—and in response, he shakes his head and bundles her into his arms, and Aldera loses the battle with the shreds of her composure. A sob wrenches itself from her throat and she clutches at his lapels, burying her head in his chest. “I miss him— _I miss him—”_

One of his hands cards through her hair. He stands silent and stalwart, his breathing steady, not faltering and flickering like a spent candle in the slightest breeze—

“He died because of me, he saw the spear being readied when I did not, and for my inattention he paid the price—I deprived Count Edmont of his beloved son—my friends of a brother—but all I can think about is my loss of him, how I am less a person and more an entity for his absence,” she whispers in a tearstained, upset voice she does not recognize as her own. “If I had just been more careful, not narrowed in on my quarry—”

Thancred makes a soothing noise. It only makes her cry harder. Soon she is beyond words, everything she has pushed down for moons rocketing back up to the surface with a vengeance: her distress at the loss of the Scions, her own fears and uncertainty about the future that she’d put aside to make room for Alphinaud’s, then losing Haurchefant, then Ysayle, then the near shave that Estinien had been, the ever-present worry of losing herself, and now Minfilia’s departure, which felt so final—all of it seeming suddenly immense and insurmountable, long after she has already faced it.

_To help those in need,_ Haurchefant said to Alphinaud that dire evening in the intercessory.

Aldera cries for what feels like ages and Thancred complains not an onze. Instead, when her sobbing subsides and she takes a sheepish step away from him, he brushes the tears from her cheeks and keeps one firm hand cupped around her jaw to keep her looking at him. “Though I disagree on your assumption of responsibility, I know full well the guilt that surviving brings with it, and I will only bid you to remember that none blame you—or him—for his choices, whether or not you feel that to be just,” he murmurs. “Aside from that, there is something I would have you know.”

She blinks at him with wet lashes that are already trying to stick together in the cold.

“Before you are the Warrior of Light to whom so many look to champion their cause, you are Aldera Lightwing—the woman who mooches sweets off her friends, snores loudly enough to be heard from her tent, and has a truly frighteningly thorough collection of stuffed carbuncles at her disposal,” he says with solemnity.

Aldera laughs, the sound made stuffy by the blockage in her nose. “They’re catalysts...”

“They are not,” he ripostes with a small smile. “They are stuffed animals. But you, Aldera, are a person. Not an entity or a divinity, nor a shade nor a memory. You care dearly for your loved ones... even if you do steal our sweets. You are as human as I am. As are we all.”

And, at that, she dissolves into tears again. Thancred sighs, but takes her back into his arms without complaint.

-

“For those we can yet save,” she says, soft, and though she yet feels the sting of loss, it is without the bitter bite of loneliness that had accompanied it before. Instead she feels something new—clarity of purpose. She could not save Haurchefant, nor Ysayle, but Alphinaud proved in his saving of Estinien, perhaps without realizing, that it is possible to save those who remain. She closes her eyes and touches her fingers to her heart, remembering those chaotic moments spent wresting the Eyes from Estinien’s armor—remembering Haurchefant and Ysayle, reaching out, Haurchefant’s hands covering hers as he lent her his strength to save one who could yet be saved.

How the two of them had waited until they saw it done. How they had been at peace.

She nods to herself. Yes, she thinks, this is the right path—and perhaps in carrying out that knightly ideal, she can...

Her friends are silent. Aldera opens her eyes to find all present smiling at her in their own ways, but it’s Thancred whose eye she meets—whose warm gaze makes her flush hot and look down at her feet. 

“Pray look at me no longer,” she mumbles, since she has nowhere to hide. “Go on already.”

They laugh, and the sound of it is sweet as it is embarrassing.

-

.

“Oh,” Thancred says with an inscrutable expression on his face, “one more thing.”

Aldera pauses. Urianger is watching with interest he is hardly even trying to hide, but Thancred appears to care little for it, so intent is he on whatever this is. She looks him in the eye. “...Yes?”

“He also extends his deepest apologies for your dinner having been cut short.” He folds his arms over his chest and gives her a slow, measured look, one with a remnant of whatever it was that drove him to tease her so relentlessly about that matter before the grand melee, but one which also is entirely too intent, as if he is searching for something. “Courteous fellow, isn’t he? You would never guess he was a politician.”

She glances at Urianger as if he might help—and quickly finds that hope dashed when he only shrugs at her and turns to speak to Papalymo. Returning her gaze to Thancred’s is a feat of will, and the very fact that it is one, that she feels suddenly nervous under his scrutiny as she did not before, makes her feel as if she ought to choose her words here incredibly carefully... even if she hardly knows why. She shifts and frowns at him. “I... I suppose so?”

“Particularly not an Ishgardian one. Does a terrible job of hiding his affections—did you have to fend off his advances all the dinner long?” Thancred asks in a low voice not meant for the others to overhear, and he’s smiling now, but it feels wrong. Wrong and... not like him. It occurs to her that he may still be—in fact, almost certainly is—wrestling with Minfilia’s farewell, and even though the two of them arrived only second-to-last in Revenant’s Toll thanks to the grace of Midgardsormr _(I shall come when you have need of my wings, child of Hydaelyn,_ the great wyrm had said, then paused, _for your travails amuse me,_ and that had been that), he had still been traveling on foot for several days before that tending to affairs with the Gnath.

Aldera’s frown deepens even as her pulse quickens the same way it does before a battle. “...Thancred, what’s gotten into you? Why are you upset? If you really must know, I’ll tell you, but not... not when you seem angry.”

“Angry?” He seems startled at that—startled enough that he blinks several times and takes a step back, his arms falling to his sides, genuine regret in his eyes. “I meant only to inquire, not to scare you. It has been a very long day. Mine apologies.”

“Right,” she says, quiet, new suspicion curling beneath her chest as she cocks her head and listens. Her horns tell her that he is uneasy—that his heartbeat is quick—and when she takes a few steps forward, putting her beyond the view of the others thanks to the partition, he takes the exact same number of steps backward, keeping steady distance between them. His eyes have turned wary. Not with the wariness one would regard an enemy with, for a mercy, but wary all the same, as if in the simple action she has begun to cross over a boundary of his. So she stops, looking up at him, and extends her hand to lay on his forearm. He’s tense, the muscles bunched beneath his warm skin. This close she can also see lingering pain and exhaustion in the fold of the wrinkles near his eyes. “...Ah.”

She can feel it, too, through her horns. It’s easy to forget with the front he keeps up how having his aether damaged has affected him.

Thancred draws in a breath.

“Come with me,” she says softly.

He manages a smile meant to fend her off, though it’s a murky, complicated thing. “I’m not the best of company right now, darling, as you’ve just seen.”

“I’m not asking for the sake of your company,” she says, rather bluntly, not knowing how else to put it. “I am deciding for my sake and your sake that, given our most recent decision to pursue paths as we see fit in concert with our common purpose, we are going to go exploring.”

“Exploring,” he echoes.

Aldera nods.

“And I have no choice in the matter?” She shakes her head. “Right. Just checking. I suppose if I’m to be kidnapped by a fair maiden, I could do worse than you.”

His smile as he says it even has a shred of genuine good feeling in it. Aldera gives him a look—he only starts behaving so with her when he wants her to be flustered and off her game—and flicks his arm with her fingers. “Go get your things. Then we go.”

“Eager to be alone with me, aren’t you,” Thancred teases, and when she makes to flick his nose this time with a scowl, he seizes her wrist with a half-lidded smile. “Easy there, easy there. I’m only joking.”

Staring up at him as he smiles down at her, his strange irritation seemingly vanished, she has the terrible re-realization that he is handsome. He’s _still_ handsome, and his sojourn in the Dravanian hinterlands only saw him fill out in places where he’d needed the strength to hunt for succor... and that’s saying nothing of the beard, the way it makes him look rugged, how it calls to mind the dream she had when they were first reunited...

And that memory sets her face aflame. But she can’t seem to look away from him, not with the way he’s looking at her, the smile slowly receding as a thoughtful look takes its place, and beneath it lies an emotion as deep as it is indecipherable, something she has not seen before on his face.

“Aldera?” Urianger’s voice breaks the strange spell that seems to have settled over them. Thancred releases her wrist. She takes several steps away from him as Urianger ventures around the corner and stops, looking between them. She holds her breath, but he says nothing, instead tilting his head. “Prithee hie thee to the front—thou dost have a delivery from Mihren. ‘Tis rather large, and as such, your attention is required.”

She smiles. “The carbuncle chair is here, then. Excellent.” Before she gets more than a few paces away, she spins on her heel and regards Thancred with her hands on her hips. “Northern gate, forty minutes.”

He stares after her as she goes. “...Carbuncle chair?”

“She hath taken up a collection,” Urianger says.

Thancred shakes his head. “No, I knew about that—it’s sort of hard to miss the stuffed animals. I meant that it’s extended into furniture.”

“Aye, so it has.” Urianger pauses. “She has started to refer to them as... ‘carbunkies’.”

The nickname is laughable from Urianger’s lips, and hearing it spoken by his arduously serious and old-fashioned friend startles Thancred, who palms his face and leans against the wall as he snorts, then snickers, then bursts into laughter. _“Carbunkies?_ Urianger—say it again.”

“I shall decline,” is the distinctly put-upon response.

Wiping tears from his eyes and pausing for the stray giggle, Thancred grins at him. “Please?”

“Nay.”

-

Scarcely has Thancred exited the premises of the Rising Stones to join Aldera for a road trip neither will say anything about when Alisaie gathers the rest of them around in a circle, hands on her hips. “Alright, everyone, listen up—now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes and we haven’t other matters to attend to immediately, I’ll concede that Urianger was right. He really is carrying a torch for her. Gods be defied, but I think it may be real this time.”

“Who’s carrying what where for who now? I don’t see any torches,” Alphinaud says with a frown. Alisaie whacks the back of his head—gently, but she does. “Ow! Sister, what in the name of Thalik was that for?”

“For being stupid, _stupid,”_ she says, arch.

Krile smirks at him. “Indeed, one would think that as much time as you’ve spent with the both of them might clue you in... but some things never change, isn’t that right?”

“Ooh, ooh!” Yda hops on her feet with a wave. “You mean Thancred, Alisaie? I called that aaaaaages ago! ‘Course, then all that business in Ul’dah happened...”

Papalymo clears his throat as the mood threatens to descend. “I daresay we are not the only ones. I’ve not failed to notice the distinct lack of charmed ladies inquiring as to the resident silver-haired bard of the Rising Stones as of late.”

“’Tis true that he has only half-heartedly put on his previous airs since our return from the Dravanian hinterlands,” Y’shtola says with a smug smirk, as if she knew long ago and is well aware that the rest of them are only just catching on.

Alisaie looks to her. “Do you know aught we do not, Y’shtola?”

“I may or may not have been the one to encourage him to apologize to her for some ill-considered words, moons ago,” she muses. “Of course, she was then still grieving Lord Haurchefant, so I did not press him further lest the realization be made unfortunate by the placement of time. But I daresay after her words in the solar she is beginning to move past that grief—and Thancred is certainly not hindering that matter.”

“He did volunteer to retrieve her from Ishgard, and they took rather a long time to return,” Alphinaud says, thoughtful.

Alisaie rolls her eyes. “They flew because Thancred cannot teleport. It only feels longer to you because _you_ were _impatient.”_

“A-Alisaie!” Alphinaud exclaims with a wounded mien that only makes her snort and turn away from him. 

“Anyways,” she says, crossing her arms as she turns to the rest, “I do think it high time to place our bets, do you not? Tataru—if you would be so kind?”

Tataru holds one finger out. “Naturally—but only if I can place my bet as well. Lest you forget, I bore witness to her and Lord Haurchefant’s love too, and I would see her hold such happiness in her eyes once more.”

“...And I as well. ‘Twas I who accompanied her most in those days. Would that I had paid more attention, that I might have celebrated what was good in the midst of so much darkness,” Alphinaud murmurs.

Alisaie looks at them both for a moment, then nods. “I can understand that. And of course, Tataru. Now, let us put forward our guesses and our gil.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi folks this has the nsfw content it's the entire last scene. bless

"I assume you have a plan.”

Aldera glances at him. “Yes. We’ll get a suitable distance from the town and I will call upon Fenrir to bear us to our destination.”

“And our destination is...” Thancred fishes, keeping an easy pace with her despite her businesslike stride.

She raises a brow.

He sighs. “You can hardly blame me for my curiosity. This is rather off-the-cuff. Do you _have_ a destination in mind?”

“Oh yes,” she says with a mild tone. Though it might be entertaining to drag him through the usual cracks and crevices of the world she haunts in the company of Mihren when her friend is available, she has something far more sedate in mind for a beginning leg to this trip, and a reasonable confidence that with the lull in world events as they are, she will have full time to return the favor he did her in that gentle push to truly mourn Haurchefant as she had forbidden herself from doing.

And—well, it’s Thancred. Once she has accomplished that, or at least gotten him to _voice_ what he keeps so close to his chest, whatever it is that gnaws at him that sparks those strange moments between them, she has a mind to see him through the Binding Coils. What remains of them, anyways, after she, Alisaie, and Mihren saw them destroyed, since the Archons at the least deserve to know the truth of what happened to Grandmaster Louisoix. To have some measure of closure. 

She could be wrong in her assessment of his willingness to go along with her, of course—in which case she would back off—but that he lets his guard down enough around her to show her those imperfect emotions, much less direct them at her, is a decent indicator that she may be able to help him as he did her. 

“Ever a mystery,” he muses. “Might I at least have a hint, my dear Lady Lightwing?”

Aldera considers for a moment. “It won’t be cold.”

“Ah. Illuminating.”

She rolls her eyes. “I am a paragon of perfect clarity. If you cannot divine my intent, ‘tis a fault of your own.”

“Wha— _pfft.”_ He reaches out and tweaks the horn nearest to him. “There’s that scintillating wit. I had begun to fear it permanently vanished.”

Calling Fenrir only takes a moment—the mythic wolf, made manifest by her aether, looks upon her and Thancred and blinks long and slow before kneeling to allow for them to mount him. Aldera turns to Thancred with a slight smile. “I have not had much cause to unleash it in recent moons.”

“Ah, and now that we are returned, you choose to let the stopper loose in my direction. I see how it is.” 

“You know the way of it,” she says as she mounts and offers him a hand up. “Smart man.”

Thancred gets himself situated behind her and loops his arms around her middle. Privately, she congratulates herself on requisitioning a flying partner who is large enough to nearly ensconce her frame—she’ll not be frozen solid by the time they make it to Costa del Sol, this much is certain. 

“That’s what they pay me for,” he says into her ear as Fenrir takes flight. She hopes that if he notices the way she shivers, he chalks it up to the wind speed.

-

His brows rise. “...Costa del Sol?”

“Yes, ‘tis the name of it,” she responds.

Thancred catches her arm. “We’re exploring _Costa del Sol?”_

“More the surrounding area.” At his defeated sigh, she smiles. “I hear the ladies are lovely.”

He blinks at her. A curious expression crosses his face—intrigue mixed with uncertainty, then chagrin, then that same flash of something else that he quickly wipes away to replace with studied pleasant neutrality. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I perused other ladies while in the company of one so lovely?”

“You don’t need to say those things to me,” she says after a moment of consideration. “I am... hardly that, truth be told.”

“Oh?”

She shrugs and makes for where Gegeruju habitually sunbathes. “I am just me.”

“Indeed, but it does not make you less lovely to be you,” he tells her.

Another shrug, this one one-armed. “Regardless. I only spoke in jest—I apologize if I gave cause for offense.”

“Well, before the banquet, it would be more than fair.” Thancred thinks of the scene she had stumbled in on that one time before—when five women had all come looking for him at once—and shudders. “...Yes. More than fair.”

Aldera pauses. “That incident with those five girls—”

“That is what I was thinking of,” he admits.

She shakes her head. “None of them seemed interested in listening to you. What ended up happening there?”

He groans. “Some things are better left to oblivion.”

“And some things are not.” Aldera blinks innocently at him when he gives her a sharp look. “I’ll arrange things with Gegeruju. He owes me some favors.”

-

She gets them one of the much-vaunted bungalows in Costa del Sol’s secluded cove—a fact that boggles, considering the waiting list for the things and how said list is comprised of a neverending stream of important personages. It must have been some favor Aldera did for Gegeruju, Thancred muses as he walks in to behold cool-toned stone tiles engraved with elegant designs on the floor and walls alike. Off to the left are a few doors to other parts of the bungalow; in front of him is a small sitting room with an unlit fireplace at its center (gods only know why they felt the need for something like that in this climate) and, taking up the upper right corner, a kitchenette.

“Cozy,” Thancred muses.

Aldera hums as she deposits her knapsack on one of the couches. “Isn’t it?”

“Almost reminds me of those Gold Saucer overnight apartments,” he says as he goes to investigate the doors. A washroom, then a bedroom... then he stops, because rather than a second bedroom, there is only a linen closet. After a moment he looks back in on the bedroom. It remains a bedroom with only a single bed in it even when he waves his hand in front of his face. “Aldera.”

He can very nearly feel the way she halts in digging through her bag. “Yes?”

“It appears there is only one bed. Meanwhile, there are two of us.”

A long silence. “...Oh,” she says, awkward, and the dismayed surprise in her voice tells him that the possibility that had begun to crest his mind—that she knowingly bore responsibility for this—is not, in fact, reality. “Oh, dear. Gegeruju must have assumed.”

She drifts over to survey the bedroom, poking her head under his arm to see the room.

“I will take the floor,” he says, feeling about as awkward as she looks.

Aldera glances up at him in dismay. “The floors are aetherically cooled. I would rather you be at full capacity and alert, especially if battle finds us. Besides...”

“Besides?” Thancred arches a brow. If she’s about to suggest _she_ take the floor—

Looking away, she bites her lip. “...I just remembered the Praetorium. It’s nothing. Anyways, the bed looks big enough. Let’s just... space. Between us. Yes?”

“It’s not exactly proper.” He frowns.

Her eyes flash to his in challenge. “Are you going to do anything?”

“What—no!” he exclaims, taken aback. “I just—”

“You are _just_ going to share the bed, so there’s nothing to worry about,” she says firmly.

His mouth hangs open for a moment. “But—”

“But nothing,” she mutters, retrieving her knapsack and unceremoniously claiming the right side of the bed. “Besides, we’ll be out most the day. It won’t matter by the time we get back.”

“I...” He sighs. “Fine. I’ll sleep atop the covers.”

Aldera nods. “There’s extra bedding in the linen closet.”

“...Right.”

-

.[](https://ibb.co/PWZXC6M)

Her primary aim appears to be reinventing cartography.

She spends days intent on it. She drags him all along the eastern La Noscean coastline with parchment, ink, and quill always at hand, and though he had been a boy still when he last spent any significant amount of time on the island, he finds the strong sun and the smell of the sea breeze to be remarkably familiar. 

Aldera smiles when he comments upon it. “I was a deckhand,” she says idly, sketching their current view on one of the taller cliffs overlooking the ocean. “I got the sun and the breeze, but this—” she gestures to the greenery around them, “was always a distant view.”

“I rarely had much cause to venture outside Limsa Lominsa myself,” Thancred replies. He sets his knife down for a moment and watches her watch sea and sky, her short white hair shifting in the gentle wind. Far from her usual getup, she wears a builder's outfit—a sleeveless shirt and practical slops with a multitude of pockets, along with dark leather thighboots and white elbow-length halfgloves—and, he reflects, Aldera could likely wear a potato sack and still manage to look lovely.

In the end, he is quite incapable of maintaining any real degree of negative feeling toward her for long. Even if she _is_ still being frustratingly vague about their purpose here.

Perhaps sensing his mellowed mood, she glances at him with a small smile. “Ah, before Grandmaster Louisoix found you?”

“Oh, you knew about that?” He gives her a curious look, but she only nods. “How—no, don’t answer. Minfilia, no doubt.”

Aldera’s smile turns sheepish. “If it helps, I was told of the pertinent facts about the others as well. She thought it might help me feel more comfortable.”

“That’s Minfilia for you. Ever considerate.” Surrounded by verdant greenery and a world full of life, the sun warming his skin and hair, Thancred wonders at how he suddenly feels almost cold. The aetherial sea had been cold—or maybe he had just perceived it as such, his damaged aether struggling to make sense of his surroundings. When they stood on the platform, he had watched as Minfilia spoke to the Warriors of Darkness—or Light—or Darknesses who were once Light—and wondered if she had been in pain, if she had suffered, if she had been cold. Where Hydaelyn found that dress for her he has no idea, but with the back as it was, and Minfilia’s shoulders sensitive to the air as they were, it had worried him, one ridiculous, menial worry beneath a pile of larger-scale concerns.

It was just one more thing that he could not do for her. 

Thancred stares at the knife in his hand and the whetting stone in the grass with unseeing eyes. _Minfilia._ Her eyes had been so bright as she floated above the platform. Unnaturally, aetherically bright, pupilless, and yet self-assured in a way she had always struggled with even as the Antecedent.

One blue, scaled hand lands on his knee. He blinks and finds Aldera kneeling in front of him, her parchments and quill set aside. Her eyes are aetheric, too, the purple ring around the pale gold a levin-aspected indicator of some past trauma she has never spoken of. She watches him for a quiet moment, then speaks, her voice soft. “How are you faring?”

_Oh,_ he thinks, realization hitting him hard and fast as he stares at her. _So that’s what this is about._

She is as clever as she is sweet—a sweet, sweet fool, one who has more than evenly matched him. When she bites her lip and starts to withdraw, his hand darts forward, keeping her where she is. “Aldera.”

“I was worried,” she says, looking away. “I still am.”

Driven by some impulsive part of his mind that pays no attention to implications nor to consequences, Thancred reaches out with his other hand and guides her face back so she is forced to look him in the eye. This close, he can hear the soft hitch in her breathing—see the expectant look, the one that tells him she thinks she has found the solution to the problem. He sighs. “I’ll survive.”

“That wasn’t what was in question.” Expectancy transforms into stubbornness.

Usually, he admires that tenacious spirit, but right now... now he frowns at her, irritation spiking in his chest. “It isn’t the same thing, you know.”

“I know,” Aldera says, steady. 

Thancred leans forward. “Do you?”

“Yes, Thancred,” she tells him in exasperation. “But she was still important to you.”

With the memories this close at hand, he thinks of how Minfilia had embraced Aldera, spoken to her so quietly that none other could hear her words—and of how the leader of the Warriors of Darkness, by virtue of being the closest to them, had been privy to the interchange, amusement flickering across his face as he listened. Combined with the one thing Minfilia had said that they had actually been able to hear—that Aldera had assumed something that wasn’t true—and with the way Aldera behaved in the time before the banquet, and the way she is looking at him now, the note of uncertainty still in her voice despite the confident mask she is wearing for him...

It all goes together—and lends credence to the suspicion that has formed in his mind.

Thancred tilts his head. She blinks, the uncertainty coming to the forefront at his continued silence, and tries again to withdraw.

He keeps her where she is.

“Thancred?” she asks, tugging at his grip.

Tipping her onto the grass does not take a great deal of effort, and she was half-expecting it, anyways. He leans over her. “You thought I was in love with her.”

Aldera falls silent. Her face is inscrutable—and given her usual expressiveness, he thinks, he seems to have hit the head on the nail.

“I’m not,” he says, “and I wasn’t. I never was.”

“Okay,” Aldera says. Still blankness. She doesn’t entirely believe him, then.

He leans in a little further. “If that’s why you’re doing this—”

“It’s not,” she bites out, finally glaring at him, but she doesn’t move. “If it pleases you, I meant what I said about _why._ Do rest assured that I would not expend the energy to draw out your sorrow if I were acting out of pity. And while we’re at it, I suppose you wish to know what happened with Ser Aymeric? Quite simply, _nothing_ happened, because our talk was perfectly polite and platonic, and then the subject of Haurchefant came up and with it Aymeric’s feelings. I do not and cannot return them, but he is a friend to me, and I told him as much. Happy?”

Thancred has to process that. Her tail flicks back and forth with all the ferocity of a lash, occasionally hitting his side, and eventually he sighs. He cannot seem to stop putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to her. As it always does, his ire drains away quickly. “...I am sorry. I have sorely misunderstood your intentions.”

“I have no wish to hurt you,” Aldera says with a somewhat milder frown as she sits up and scoots away from him.

He nods. “I... I know.”

“Minfilia was—is—dear to you. ‘Tis important no matter the nature of the bond.” She tucks her knees up against herself and curls her tail over her feet. “It may be that I am ill-equipped to understand. The closest thing I have resembling what you shared is... well, I do not. If I had family before I washed up in Moraby Bay, I do not remember them, and I certainly did not afterward. But I am here to listen, and to do what I may. I do not enjoy seeing you in pain.”

Thancred looks at her, wondering at the ease with which she says it even as he softens at the small revelation of her own orphanhood. He holds out a hand. “Come here?”

Aldera takes it. He pulls her back until she sits with her back to his chest, as they do when riding one of her numerous mounts, and together they watch the sea, the hard edge of their silence ebbing away with the gentle, steady sound of the waves hitting the rock below.

Eventually he sighs. “Forgive me, I—it’s easier this way.”

She only nods.

“Minfilia was still a child when we met,” he says, and though the scenery could not be more different, he feels the heat of the sun the same as he did that day. “There was a parade in Ul’dah. There was also intrigue, as there always is, and in the chaos of preparation that is a part of all things festive, a gobbue broke free of its fetters. I could have—ought to have—prevented its rampage, but in my inattention I did not, and her father was killed. It is my understanding that her birth mother was not in the picture. Either way, with his death, she was alone. From then on I looked after her, and watched over her growth. Paltry recompense for a father lost—but it was what needed to be done.”

Another nod. He can only imagine what is filtering through to her horns.

Thancred closes his eyes. “In truth, F’lhaminn raised her. It was in matters of the Echo that I proved most useful, using my connections with the other members of the Circle of Knowing and introducing her to them, that she might learn of its nature and use, and from there forge her own path. Minfilia chose to use the knowledge she gained to lead others on the path. I.” He swallows. “I was ever proud of her. I did not say it nearly enough.”

“She knew,” Aldera assures him.

He makes an acknowledging noise, if not an entirely convinced one. There is a weight that has settled over him at the remembrance of things he has spent moons trying to bury in preparation for a potential confirmation of loss—a weight he had refused to consider, and a weight that sees him lean his forehead against Aldera’s hair, taking the comfort she has gone so far out of her way to offer. “She was unfond of the cold, and she preferred a particular spiced Eastern tea to any other drink, but she would not ask for it with the price tag as high as it was due to importation taxes. I trained her in self-defense and she had a talent for blades—if she had wanted to, she could have taken up the way of the rogue, but her heart was ever set on peace. She rose early each morning to greet the sun. When time allowed, she and Tataru would sit on the roof of the Waking Sands, and they would talk for hours on end.”

Dear Minfilia, who had so many dreams. Who greeted each new member of the Scions with humble gratitude. Who longed to find the truth that lay at the heart of the world.

And, he knows, who desired, beyond all else, to find purpose. Her true purpose.

“She took me along to the markets once, before Castrum Meridianum,” Aldera says. “She was looking for nameday presents.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “We spent half the day looking through every stall for the perfect gift for each person. Watching her haggle over a purchase was a better lesson in diplomacy than half of Alphinaud and I’s ventures.”

He laughs. If it sounds halfway like a sob, if his throat is tight and his eyes are burning, there is no one else to hear or see it. “That was all her. A natural talent.”

“Tataru had her winter coat specially made,” she murmurs, one hand coming to settle over the one he left dangling over his knee. “and Y’shtola brought her that tea every time she returned to headquarters. F’lhaminn refused to come with Alphinaud and I until she had made Minfilia’s favorite perfume. Urianger was ever at her side and ready to offer assistance with whatever she so needed. Yda and Papalymo dragged her out to lunch when she worked too long and you were away. And you, Thancred—she told you, did she not? Her dearest, as she was yours. Minfilia will not be forgotten. She is entirely too loved for such to ever occur.”

“And you?” he whispers in her ear, seized by a sudden need to know, from her own mouth, from her own heart.

Aldera squeezes his hand. “I have ever been alone, so it took me time to know and understand. A sister. One who knew what it was to walk my path.”

Thancred draws in a deep breath—or tries to. But he finds himself overwhelmed by the confirmation, by the knowing that Minfilia was so deeply cherished, that his and F’lhaminn’s efforts to give a young girl some semblance of a family, however strange, had been the seed that would give her the strength to forge her own. A sob wrenches itself from his throat; he buries his face in her hair and forces himself to remain silent after that, but he cannot stop the shuddering breaths he draws in or the tears that soak his face and her hair alike. 

“Forgive me,” he says again after a time—after his tears recede and his shoulders stop shaking, “for burdening you with an old man’s concerns.”

The noise she makes at that is deeply unimpressed. “Old?”

“A crotchety thirty-two.” Remembering that further reminds her that she is scarcely twenty, and he swallows, but he hardly has time to begin feeling guilty before she twists in his grip to glare at him. “’Tis true.”

She scoffs. “You are not _old_ when you can still move like that in battle.”

“My dear, you offend old men everywhere with such a statement. As such, I must consider myself personally offended,” he says with a smile—one which breaks into a grin when she makes to lightly whap him. He ducks away from her hand. “There are plenty of old men who are still battle-hardened veterans! Do not look at me like that.”

Aldera tilts her head, somehow managing to look at him down the line of her nose despite still being shorter than him even while seated. Some passing part of him clinically notes her hands gripping his outer thighs to maintain position, but he quashes that line of thought as quickly as he can. “Oh yes. Old men without wrinkles, rheumy breathing, or any significant difficulty related to the travails of old age, which would make them young men who fancy themselves aged.”

“Most of them, but not me—hah!” Thancred seizes her wrists when she tries again to hit him, grinning madly down at her.

She tugs. No luck—his grip tightens. “You’re ridiculous.”

“It is my sincere regret to inform you... that it takes one to know one.” At her outrage he laughs, bundles up her wrists behind her back with one hand, and falls backward, bringing her with him. She moves her leg to perhaps kick or knee him, and he quickly puts a pin in that by trapping it beneath his knee. He smiles up at her. 

Though this could quickly turn into a wrestling match should she wish it, today does not appear to be a wrestling day. Instead she sighs. “I don’t suppose you might let go...?”

“Oh, no. The moment I do that, I’ve a pint-sized horned demon out for my kneecaps.” This, he reflects, is really doing wonders for his mood.

Aldera groans. “Keep talking and I shall put an end to more than just your kneecaps.”

“Really now?” He shifts to keep her leg pressed down. “Go on.”

“I shall start from the armpits,” she muses with malice—her tail is flicking again.

Thancred smirks. “You’ll have to free yourself first.”

“Just watch me.” There’s a pout in that voice.

But before she can actually do anything, he shifts under her again, something in his back twinging, and freezes at the sharp pinpricks of pleasure that flash low in his belly—brief, fleeting, but his body responds, and Aldera lets out a soft breath that sounds almost like a hiss, and with a flush of awareness he realizes that particular parts of their anatomy are... _close._ It doesn’t help his state of affairs in the least, frozen beneath her as he is. He opens his mouth to say something— _anything._

Aldera sits up, looking him in the eye. She puts her palms on his chest and rocks her hips experimentally against his. Pleasure ignites, this time, and Thancred inhales sharply, his hands flying to grip her hips. “Aldera?”

“I choose to believe the old do not experience arousal,” she tells him. But she knows what he’s really asking—he can see it in her eyes despite how they’ve drooped to half-lid. 

Despite himself, he snorts. “I don’t think _age_ is the inhibiting factor there— _Aldera—”_

“So I affect you, then?” She sounds pleased by that. 

Thancred grips her hips tight enough to keep her still as he sits up and gives her a stern look. He feels her—gods help him—he feels her involuntarily clench around nothing through the layers of their clothing, and the revelation that she likes rough handling does the exact opposite of “help” in this situation. He closes his eyes. “Aldera.”

Her name comes out as a rasp. She shivers. He knows he’s in trouble.

“You are not helping,” he manages to get out.

Mistake. Aldera is impervious to his plight, caught up in the adrenaline-fueled rush. “You’re affected by me.”

“I don’t know if you happen to be aware of this or not,” he says, clipped against the heat simmering in his veins, “but you happen to be an incredibly beautiful woman and a peerless fighter. Yes, I am affected by you. Is that truly any surprise?”

Something in his tone must get through to her, because she visibly brings herself up short and sighs, scooting away from his erection even as she leans her forehead on his clavicle. “My apologies, Thancred. I don’t mean to tease.” She pauses. “But you do feel good.”

“Stars, Aldera, you are going to be the _death_ of me.”

He feels her smile against his chest. “Let us hope that never bears out in truth.”

“I will do what I may to ensure it never will,” he promises quietly.

Aldera hums as she sits back, briefly surveys him, then stands and offers him her hand. “That’s all I could ask for. There’s a place further down this way—come on.”

-

The floor is _cold._ And uncomfortable.

Thancred opens his eyes and glares at the darkened ceiling. At the very least, Aldera does not snore when sleeping in a proper bed, so he has quiet as an accompaniment and not a cacophonous elegy of snores—but he’s still not going to be able to get to sleep like this. 

Propping one knee up, he weighs his sense of morality: suffer the cold and have a clean conscience, or give in and risk a potentially awkward and embarrassing situation upon regaining consciousness... but get enough sleep and keep terrible knots from forming in his back.

_Fuck it,_ he decides, wrapping his blanket around him as he rises. Mayhaps ensconcing himself in it like he is a particularly large child under a mother chocobo’s wing will prevent any embarrassing incidents. Mindful to be gentle so as not to wake her, he lays himself out on the bed, stomach down, and closes his eyes. He is old enough that his memories drift to the same days Aldera had so carefully drawn out of him. Even though he had primarily been teasing her before— _that—_ he hadn’t been altogether jesting. Fifteen years ago—near sixteen, even, and he had been so much younger then, so much more foolish than Aldera has ever been.

Except—

Except for just hours ago, when she looked at him with those half-lidded eyes and the dark of want in them, when she moved against him, and now he can’t stop thinking about the way she responded so keenly to him—

_Enough,_ he reprimands himself. The Thancred who first faced personal guilt and despair under a hot sun outside a clinic when he learned of Warburton’s death has long since had time. Time to grow and fumble through a string of first relationships, time to bear the responsibility of watching over a girl in need of a family, time to know better than to spend half of his tomorrows panting over the young god-slayer and dear friend whose soft breathing beside him fills the silence of the night. 

And yet.

He might have kissed her. He certainly had the inclination to.

That she wants him in some capacity is less surprising than it might have been had F’lhaminn not taken pity on him and disclosed the truth of Aldera’s oddly shy behavior prior to that damned banquet. What Thancred does not know is what precisely that capacity is. She may be moving on, but she is still grieving the death of one love.

And, he thinks, his heart cracking open a little at the thought, he does not think he could _do_ casual, if that is what she wants. Not with her. Not after she has witnessed many of his personal ignominies and sought to create time and space for him to process—he is not blind to how carefully everything was arranged and chosen—without any thought for herself but to be of help to a friend.

Thancred turns to the side and considers her outline in the dim night. The moonlight casts half of her face in luminescent splendour. Her tattoos emit a faint aetheric glow. In sleep, the world-weariness which hangs about her like a shroud recedes, but it does not fully diminish: there is a pull to the corner of her lips, a furrow between her brows. What she dreams of is yet another mystery, but he can feel her tail shifting, aimless, before it curls over his calf. He only barely restrains himself from an audible groan when she makes a soft and searching noise, rolling close to him but not quite touching. Unfortunately for him, if he moved back any further, he would fall out of the bed.

“Maman, my hand,” she says, turning her head—and this he knows, too. She’s still asleep. It took cornering Alphinaud when Thancred knew Aldera would be away to learn of the full breadth of the many ways in which she had changed. Among other things, Alphinaud spoke to him of the nightmares she began to experience after the Vault, how the one time he’d tried to mention the particulars of what he heard to her, her face had gone blank and dead-eyed for seconds. Then he spoke with a troubled frown of how she well and truly hadn’t a single clue what he was talking about when he managed to snap her out of it. “Maman, _please...”_

He holds his breath. 

“Please,” she repeats. Her voice is small and heartbroken in a way he has never heard, not even when she cried for Lord Haurchefant, and he finds he cannot resist the simple instinct to reach out and pull her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin. “Maman...”

The rest dissolves into broken mumbles. He makes senseless soothing noises and strokes her hair as gently as he can. Sleep comes for him that way, monitoring her for upset, and he sleeps better than he has in a long while.

-

“There’s somewhere you ought to see,” Aldera says only moments after he wakes. Catching his groggy confusion, she smiles in apology. “...After you’re up and about.”

Thancred makes a vague grunt of acknowledgment and closes his eyes again. He gathers her up closer to him—and then he pauses.

She’s still tangled up in his embrace, and one of his legs is wedged between hers.

Aldera sounds amused. “You were holding me so tightly. I did not wish to wake you.”

“Aldera,” he says, letting go as if burned by the feel of her, feeling an acute mixture of helpless upset and discontent that he does not know exactly how to lend a voice to.

She looks up at him, listening for a moment, then sits up. “I’m sorry. You truly were asleep, and after everything, precious little rest is given to us. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that,” Thancred says slowly. He is _not_ awake enough for this. Throwing an arm over his eyes, he tries to think, worrying at the inside of his cheek. “I feel no discomfort around you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I quite enjoy being in your presence. But... you allow me much.”

That brings a thoughtful silence. Eventually, she speaks, her voice neutral. “And you take what is allowed. So where does that leave us?”

“That _is_ what I’m asking.” He gives up the lovely, lovely darkness created by the crook of his elbow to sit up and hold her gaze.

More silence—he can see the gears turning behind her eyes. “Well,” she says, measured, “it may be of interest to you to learn that I find you remarkably handsome, and that I would not call in my favor from Gegeruju for just anyone—or even the others.”

“Really now,” he says.

Aldera nods. “Would I do this for Urianger? No. Y’shtola... well, maybe, but Y’mhitra would have words for me, and that would make working together awkward. So on second thought, no.”

“Really? _Y’shtola?”_ Thancred gapes. 

His disbelief makes her flush. “What? You have eyes too!”

“Not for the woman who, when she was a girl of fourteen, repeatedly kicked me in places I didn’t know could experience that kind of sensitivity to pain for the high crime of accidentally walking in on her changing for half a second,” he tells her, aggrieved, and she laughs—throws back her head and cackles, even, falling back on the bed. “Full glad am I that my pain can provide you some amusement, my lady.”

“She did that to you and you still habitually cross her?” she manages to get out, wiping tears from her eyes, grinning at him.

His heart throbs at the sight—alarming, that. Perhaps his age really is catching up to him. “...Well, one must have _some_ sort of hobby.”

“Indeed,” she muses. “If Scion work ever proves complete, then the two of you could travel the realm as a comedy troupe.”

Thancred shakes his head. “I shall have to speak to her on it. I’m sure she will be absolutely delighted.”

“Aye, aye.” A pause stretches out between them. Aldera taps one foot on the mattress. In the motion he sees traces of her previous shyness as she looks in his general direction through her lashes. “...You do understand that I would not allow you to touch me if I did not rather like you?”

“That part I do understand, yes,” he replies.

She tilts her head. “So it is something else that concerns you.”

“Yes and no.” At her visible confusion, he sighs, less out of irritation and more out of wry awareness that this is not easy. “We have both lost those dear to us quite recently. If it is physical comfort you seek, I...”

He trails off. _I cannot be the one to give it to you_ is a sentence that feels wrong, but it is true. Looking down at his hand, remembering the heat of her skin against his palms, he closes his eyes and clenches his fingers into a fist. 

Why nothing in his life can be uncomplicated is a mystery. Or cosmically unfair. Whichever proves truer.

“Oh,” Aldera breathes, and quite all at once, her hands are cradling his jaw and tilting his face upwards to look at her wide eyes. “Oh, oh, _oh—_ Thancred, no. I would not do that to you either. I did not bring you here for that, either. My only thought was to let you be able to breathe for once—” She cuts herself off, flushing again, much deeper this time, and lets go of him as she hangs her head. “I apologize. I did not realize—that is, I have hardly had cause—I am not given to seeking such things out without the existence of an abiding affection to drive me. I forget that others do not live the same way.”

Thancred blinks. “I— _oh.”_

“Oh?”

“It makes sense,” he elaborates. Then he pauses as the second half of that hits him, and he feels as if the air has been knocked out of him. “Affection?”

She bites her lip. “Lots of it.”

“Lots of affection,” Thancred repeats.

She nods.

“For me.”

Nods again.

“What kind of—”

_“Thancred,”_ Aldera says, exasperated, her face so dark he could almost be looking at the night sky. “Need I ride you into the mattress before you understand?”

He tries for words. He works his jaw, his mouth opening and closing. He shuts it with a click and stares.

“Because I can _do_ that—”

He kisses her. He surges up and leans over her and slants his mouth over hers, tipping her onto the mattress, hot relief coursing through his veins like wildfire. She makes a soft, pleased noise, melting into the kiss, pressing up against him, her body still warm with the soft accumulated heat of sleep, and just as soon as he has broken away for air does she reach out and thread her fingers through his, her chest brushing his with each heaving breath they each take.

Her lips, tattooed white, pull up in an open-mouthed grin. He watches the way her tongue flicks out to wet them and finds himself dipping down again—

“I’m never really out of danger, you know. Are you alright with this?” she asks, quite suddenly.

Thancred pauses from where his hand is hovering over her breast and raises an incredulous brow at her.

“Just thinking.” Aldera bites her lip. “Never mind.”

“Need I remind you of how this happened?” Thancred gestures to his silvered eye, smiling.

It helps—she relaxes. “No. Good point. Um... you may proceed.”

He laughs, helpless, and buries his face in her neck, acquiescing to her politely-phrased command. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Touch me,” she says. Her free hand skims down his back, and she rubs the hem of his shirt between her fingers. “A lot.”

“So communicative.” But he does as she bids: he touches her and kisses her, slips his hand beneath her oversized sleeping tunic and traces the edges of the scales on her hips, ghosts his fingers along the area above the cloth waistband of her sleep shorts. She’s not any quieter a lover than she is a colleague—which is to say she is not terribly loud with her soft noises and sighs of approval, but she doesn’t need to be, because he knows her, and the way she drinks in his every touch with an intensity in her eyes sets heat to coiling in his belly.

He loses track of time, his world narrowing to her, just her. Somewhere along the way his shirt gets tossed somewhere over his shoulder. Her hands fist in his hair when his mouth closes around a nipple, drawing a groan of approval out of him as she arches into his mouth. Gods, but it feels good— _she_ feels good, and she gasps when he winds a gentle circle around the bud, her heartbeat picking up and pounding in her ribcage.

“T-Thancred—ah—” 

Thancred smiles as he speaks into her chest in a low voice. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”

Aldera reaches out and guides one of his hands down—she also takes the opportunity to squeeze his bicep with a satisfied noise, making him laugh again even as he lightly drums his fingers on the skin above her waistband. She wriggles closer to him. “Touch me.”

“Touch you where?” he asks, and she groans in exasperation. “We must be clear about these things, darling. Communication is key.”

She makes the oddest noise. Something between a snort, a groan, and outright laughter. He can’t imagine why. “You’re one to talk... Finger me, Thancred.”

“As my lady commands.” He sits up and pulls her into his lap, pressing a kiss to her lips, smiling into it when she leans into him, lacing her arms around his neck. These things take a bit of preparation, as he well knows, so when he slings his arm over her hip and slips his hand into her shorts he traces feather-light touches about the skin of her inner thighs and above her core. Then his fingers dip down, circling her clitoris, and her grip on him tightens. He spends the next while listening to and feeling out her reactions—slight pressure and she cants her hips, more pressure and she whines, writhing, necessitating a firm grip on her hip to keep her steady enough for a rhythm.

He could bring her to climax just like this, with her breathing out his name in broken syllables, her chest heaving, her hands mapping his skin with an urgency before his fingers move in just the right way and she cries out, her nails digging into his upper arms. But she did make a request—and, well. He lives to please. So he eases off on the pressure, smiling at the soft noise of disappointment she makes, and—slowly—presses a finger into her slick heat. The way she immediately clenches around him makes him inhale quietly.

“More,” Aldera murmurs. “I can take more.”

Thancred closes his eyes with a quiet groan. She is going to be the death of him. At least it will be a gloriously happy one, he thinks, shifting against her and adding another finger in as she bids. Scarcely a moment of him waiting for her to adjust passes before she wiggles her hips in silent demand and he simply has to kiss her as he begins to move, setting a steady pace. 

“You’re doing so well, darling,” he rasps, crooking his fingers slightly, and by the way she jolts and moans he knows he’s hit the right angle. He focuses on that, feeling her walls tighten around him, feels the strain of his own need intensifying at her pleasure, tastes sweat in his mouth, every sense feeling brighter and more real as he whispers praises into her neck and she reaches her peak, falling apart around his fingers with a wordless cry. 

He can feel wet heat blossom between them, and he _wants._

She slumps in his arms, boneless, and he slips his fingers from her, wiping them off on his sleep pants and tracing light, nonsensical patterns into her back. He hums a mindless tune until she pulls back to look at him, her face aglow.

“Good?” he asks with a small smile.

She kisses him. He falls back onto the mattress with the force of it, his surprised laughter resounding in her mouth. When she breaks away she looks at him again. “Yes.”

“Then I am glad to have been of service,” he says, propping himself up on an elbow.

Aldera pushes him back into the mattress. At his curious look she smiles. “My turn.”

“You don’t have to—”

A shake of the head sees him fall silent. “Not about exchange,” she says, leaning in and bumping her nose against his. “I want to. I—It’s my pleasure.”

“Then I shall gladly acquiesce.” It earns him another smile before she regards him with the same intent focus with which she evokes the ancient Allagan arts in battle—a thought which sends a shiver through him.

And then she squeezes his abs.

Thancred laughs, covering his mouth when she looks up at him with her solemnity shattered, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve wanted to touch you for a long time.”

“I can tell,” he says. She skitters her fingers across his sides. He giggles.

“It’s good to hear you laugh,” she tells him after a moment longer, moving to shimmy his sleep pants down and off his hips—which he happily lifts to help her along, and then kicks off once they’re down far enough. And she does touch him: she maps his torso with questing fingers, lingering over his scars, pressing kisses to his neck, his collarbone, mouthing at the raised lines and splotches of tissue earned over years of hard-fought battles. Thancred hums a winding tune to the rhythm of her leisurely exploration. She glances up at him. “...And good to hear you singing—or making music, at least. Is that the song that’s been going around Ishgard?”

He hadn’t been thinking about it, having been content as a cat in the sun to bask in the lazy pleasure she sparked with her touch, but he hums out the same notes and realizes she’s right. “It is. You do know what they call it?”

“The Dragonsong,” is Aldera’s soft response, and her eyes grow sad, remembrance passing through her body with the same effect as a cold wind. She shakes herself and leans forward to capture his lips in a kiss. Thancred cups her face in his hands, returning it with fervor, hoping to communicate through that intensity what he cannot say in words.

_I’m here._

The kiss grows more heated as she makes a noise between a groan and a desperate please, opening her mouth to him, grinding into him with a sudden fire and a need. He moans. The way she shifts and moves and feels against him, all damp heat and ragged want, is maddening, and he bucks his hips up into her, seeking more. “Al _dera—”_

She swirls her hips—angles them so his tip meets her clitoris through the thin layers of his smalls—and he can feel the rippling shiver that echoes up her spine from where his hands have slid down over her breasts, down over and around her curves, to cup her rear with needy fingers. Whatever she had in mind before seems to have been lost to this. Not that he’s complaining when she’s breathing out his name in a chain of quiet exhalations that sound near to prayer, her voice low and delightful.

But Aldera has ever surprised him. So it is that with a mutter of off already does she lift herself off him (he only nearly bites off a whine at the loss of friction) and practically yank his smalls off, then her tunic. He is drawn to her scales immediately. Even when she teases him dreadfully by dragging herself back and forth across him, not allowing him to slip in, half-clouding his vision with tortured pleasure, he takes distinct notice of the scales. They’re _beautiful,_ shimmering in the refracted noonday light that has made it through the curtains, a weathered ivory that twines about her sides in loose, jagged diamond patches and curls as the waves do beneath her breasts. She shifts, and he can see for the first time the way her flush spreads down her neck, night sky fading into gentle morning.

“You’re beautiful,” Thancred says, simply beholding her.

Aldera smiles even as she bites her lip and pauses in her relentless edging of him—but she doesn’t shy away from his gaze, instead briefly leaning forward to brush an affectionate thumb over his cheek before shuffling back to sit on his thighs and close a loose hand around him. 

He moans. Her callouses— _“Gods.”_

“Tell me what’s good,” she says, patting his right pectoral. “I am—not the most experienced.”

Thancred lets his head fall back onto the pillows as she strokes him. Pleasure builds with each flex of her fingers, each careful, feather-light skim of the underside of his tip. He’s panting by the time he has any mind to speak. “Darling— _gods—fuck—_ do whatever you want.”

“Really now?”

“Sweetheart,” he manages, forcing his eyes open to look at her. Levin jolts through him at the sight of her swollen lips and wide pupils. At her hand around his cock. _Aldera._ Aldera, quiet and expressive, never indicating interest in another. Aldera, a genius of combat, a woman of unreal strength and skill. Aldera—the dear friend whose wellbeing he worries for day in and day out, the dear, indefinable one who always puts others before herself, the dear love of his who is obsessed with carbunkles and sweets and prefers coffee and hardly ever touches a hairbrush, who has saved him time and again—touching _him. Wanting_ him. His breath stutters, but he swallows and finishes speaking. “If it’s you, you could spend your time dripping candle wax on my nipples while I’m tied up and chances are I’d spend half my nights in the field stroking myself to the memory of your face as you did so.”

“That’s oddly specific, Thancred. Thoughts to keep in mind, I suppose, for next time—but for now, I ought to give you a good memory, no?” she muses. 

_Next time._ He finds himself distracted from the thought by her frankly baffling act of letting go of him, only for understanding to click when she begins to lower her head. Instead he pulls her up to his mouth by her shoulders, a pull she goes along with willingly, though she looks at him questioningly when they part. He brushes her bangs aside and runs his fingers through her hair. “I had something else in mind—if you’ll allow it.”

“Oh,” she says, and he falls a little bit in love with the sly look in her eyes and the way they narrow when she smiles. “Tell me, then. What you want to do.”

He smiles back. Then he pulls her into his embrace and holds her tight, tilting his head to brush the tip of his nose against the base of her horn and speak in a low timber that this new position gives him the advantage of feeling her shivery reaction to. “’Tis my thought that you will quite enjoy it. And since you said next time, well, whichever you do not choose can certainly be revisited in the future. Your choice is twofold. Would you like to, as you said, _ride me into the mattress,_ or would you prefer me to take the lead?”

“Such difficult choices you’ve given me...” Aldera pouts, a thoughtful motion that he feels against his ear, and her tail wraps around his thigh. Gods. “I do try to make good on my promises. Let’s go with the first one.”

“You’re in command, then,” he says with a roguish smile.

She doesn’t waste any further time pressing the issue. Her hands find their way to his chest again as she reaches down to line him up and slowly—maddeningly slowly—settles, working on taking him in an inch at a time. He groans at the silken heat of her around him and puts his hands on her hips, just to hold her, and when she has fully taken him in, he breathes out, long and slow. She feels _so good._ A thought he has thought often enough that he risks growing repetitive, which a bard must never do unless it is planned, and luckily for him—luckily for him, every thought is knocked from his mind when she clenches around him and carefully shifts this way and that, learning her body with him inside of her.

_Gods,_ Thaliak, Thal, Nymeia, Menphina, Azeyma, _all_ of them and the stars above, he wants to _move,_ he wants—

“Thancred, do you want me?”

His eyes fly open and bore into hers. His hands tighten on her hips. _“Yes.”_

“Good,” she breathes. Her hair is mussed and her face flushed and her lips swollen, and he thinks _I did that,_ much like a boy would, but it’s _Aldera,_ and feels himself throb. “I want you too.”

And Aldera moves. _Finally_ he is free to meet the pace she sets and thrusts up into her, groaning, cupping her breast as she makes quiet noises and her eyes flutter shut. He can feel her tighten around him when he hits a particular angle—she cries out, loud in the focused silence they have fallen into, and he immediately does his level best to do it again. “Let me hear you—”

“Thancred,” she whimpers. Her rhythm stutters for a moment when he rumbles in wordless response.

She’s getting close. He can feel his own body responding, tension curling in the base of his spine. Only one thing to do, then, which is to press his thumb against her clit, to tease and toy and whisper endearments and filthy praise until she clamps around him with a wail he captures with his mouth, only just avoiding an unfortunate clash of teeth as he cannot help but fall over the edge with her, shuddering to completion inside of her, his senses wholly taking their leave—all except for the bruising grip of her hands below his shoulderblades, delicious and enticing, and the ever-present heat of her around him. 

How long they stay like that he does not know. When higher thought returns to him he is still inside of her. Her grip has loosened, but she is curled up quite comfortably against him, her chin hooked over his shoulder.

He falls back on the bed, bringing her with him, and the motion brings a realization that has him stifle a laugh. She feels it, though, and glances at him in silent question.

“I can’t feel my legs,” Thancred confides. “You may consider me ridden well into the mattress, my dear.”

Aldera makes a noise of understanding. “Is that the blood flow being cut off, or—”

“—coming so hard I saw stars, I should think,” he murmurs, one hand tracing affectionate patterns across her back.

She laughs. He feels her eyelashes brush against his skin as she closes her eyes. “I am still of a mind to show you to that place I mentioned... though perhaps not today.”

“What manner of place is it?” he asks.

“The Binding Coils of Bahamut,” she says, half-drifting off. She yawns. “Or what remains of them after Alisaie and I ventured through, disabling them.”

“Ah.” He falls silent—he knows why she thought to show him the Coils, why she doubtless would like to show every Archon to them should time and secrecy allow. Urianger did speak of what Alisaie communicated to him: Master Louisoix’s fate, the final destruction of Bahamut by Aldera’s hand, and the importance of discretion, given what happened to their mentor. But what Alisaie said had itself been scant. The fewer who know, the better.

None of them are any stranger to secrets. More than a few come to mind as he thinks, thinks of what the Archons collectively know of each other by the virtue of the passage of years, thinks of what they know on an individual to individual basis, thinks of his youth and the experience in espionage that went into the dissertation that saw him inducted into the Circle of Knowing. Beyond them there would one day be Minfilia and her secrets, the Students of Baldesion and theirs, and later still would bring Aldera to them, a girl who had defied death thrice before ever meeting Y’shtola in Limsa Lominsa and finding herself chosen by Hydaelyn. A girl with so many secrets she may as well wear them about her as a shroud.

Not unlike him, truth be told.

“Aldera,” he murmurs, and she makes an acknowledging noise. “Thank you for trusting me.”

She looks up, scanning his face—in so doing she sees something in his expression that causes her to wriggle her arms out from beneath him and lift herself up on her elbows to kiss him, short and sweet. “Gladly do I do so. And I should probably clean up.”

“These _were_ fresh sheets, weren’t they.” 

“That they were.”

A moment of silence passes, each of them considering that and the contrast to their current reality. He sighs with a smile and squeezes her hip before urging her upwards. “Go on. I’ll handle the bedding.”

“I’ll be right back,” Aldera promises.


	3. Chapter 3

Though part of her is sure she must be dreaming, the way she dreams of lifetimes that never happened and worlds she has never seen, the proof positive in opposition to her disbelief lies between her legs along with the pleasant residue lingering in her core. Aldera stifles a laugh as she cleans herself off, taking a damp washcloth to the needed areas. A particularly bawdy sea shanty has just sprung to mind—what do you do with the captain’s daughter indeed? Or, given their pasts, the captain’s son...

It still feels a bit unreal.

Sex doesn’t solve everything. She’s still unclear on many things, Thancred’s feelings among them, but what became clear to her in the act is—

—that, well—

—well. 

No matter what happens, a part of her will always look for him when she enters a room, will always secretly delight in the observations he saves for speaking lowly into her ear. Will always be silently assessing the small movements of his facial expressions to figure out what it is he is thinking and feeling when he hides those things so carefully. Will always want to see him find the peace that she knows still eludes him—

—in short, that quite without realizing it, she has come to love him.

_ A lot of affection,  _ indeed. She shakes her head at her own downplaying of the matter. How to voice the proper sentiment is a matter far more complicated than it had been with giving Haurchefant, and while she does not fear the fact of her own love, she does fear the consequences of voicing it. Thancred is every bit as self-sacrificing as had Haurchefant been but far more closed off about it. She knows, knew the moment it happened, that saving her had been Haurchefant’s own choice, that he had intended to keep them both safe, but the shield broke—a price he was prepared to pay, and a price he did pay, but it was not the outcome he hoped for. He had plans, and dreams for the future, and his passing meant he would never see them realized...

...and that, she thinks, is not a fate she wants for Thancred, himself someone who took up the vanguard of his dear one’s ideals and longs to see them realized.

_ But what of what he wants?  _ she asks herself, setting the washcloth on her knee for a moment as she gazes sightlessly at the bathroom’s tiled wall. Years have passed by since Hydaelyn came to her that first time she was a passenger rather than a crewmember on the  _ Luxen, _ three or four if her reckoning is not incorrect, and Aldera has the weight of loss and a quiet, constant fear of more to show for it. Would he rather that, to see—

No, no—he told her himself. He’s more responsible than that. And he wasn’t in love with Minfilia.

Minfilia whose memory still makes her heart hurt—Minfilia, who she misses—

He certainly didn’t seem in love with another, so responsive and heated was he in her bed, so perhaps she ought to... believe him. Even if the body can do an awful lot of things that look like love and are nothing like it in truth.

It might have been a kinder fate had she never fallen for anyone—not Haurchefant, not this new, deeper feeling she is discovering she has for Thancred—and never felt this foreboding personal uncertainty, haunted as she is by her need to play the hero, to listen to the Echo’s call to hear and respond to the troubles of all. Maybe that is what made Hydaelyn see a worthy champion in her. Who better than a skilled fighter who disregards personal need to serve the greater good to fulfill the will of the Mothercrystal? To bring Light to Darkness, to prevent Calamity, to put an end to a Song that rang for a thousand years?

But surely there must be others like her. The Warriors of Darkness had been such in their own world, even if they had only set out to earn some coin and get by in the beginning, like any other band of adventurers. Even the members of the Blade, Mihren among them, have streaks of altruism that see the Free Company frequently hearkening to her call when facing down near anything from the depths of the earth to the Binding Coils to Azys Lla’s research facilities.

She does not understand. Perhaps she never will. Mortal will is unlike that of the gods.

_ Is Hydaelyn a god? _

Aldera shoves the thought down and away, locks it tightly in a quiet corner of her mind, because some thoughts are really just—too much, and she’s about done cleaning herself up, anyways. On go her sleep shorts and tunic, into the hamper the washcloth goes, and out the door and back into the bedroom she pads.

She finds herself stopping a few paces in and staring at Thancred.  _ Gods, _ but he is handsome—her face heats up as she remembers that _ he just let her bed him— _ oh, every sleepy inch of him is attractive, laid out on the crisp sheets with his hands serving as a resting place for his head, his ever-contemplative full lips—

“Aldera?” Thancred asks. Those same lips, which had been in neutral repose just moments earlier, are upturned. His eyes are warm.

What had she been thinking about again?

Aldera jolts, blinks, and slaps her heated cheeks. “Um... sorry.”

“Like what you see?” He’s teasing. Doesn’t help the flush.

She hums as she climbs back into bed and rests half on top of him. “Yeah,” she says into his clavicle.

“Well!” A faint pink spreads up from his neck and colors his cheeks—he hadn’t expected that, huh. “That’s good, I suppose. Yes. Very good.” His pause is unconvincing. “What has you so forthcoming?”

Aldera smiles into his skin. “You would like to know, would you not.”

“I truly would,” Thancred says, purposely lowering his voice. “It’s not often you speak so openly.”

“In the Dravanian hinterlands, when you fended the Warriors of Darkness off...” She ponders how best to say it. “Seeing you—it was a huge relief. It has continued to be every time I do see you. And I suppose after everything, I hardly have much cause for shyness. I do like what I see. And I... if you’re amenable, I...” She swallows. “I would like to keep seeing it.”

He gathers her up in his embrace, his strong arms a comforting weight over her back. “I am amenable. Of course I am—more than amenable, even,” he says softly. “In truth—I ought to have realized much sooner that I was not subtle in the liberties I took with you—”

“Aymeric mentioned that,” she blurts out.

Thancred freezes, then sighs through his nose into her hair. “Did he now?”

“I sort of knew—I mean, no one else was crowding up in my space, and you were the one Y’shtola kept looking at when Aymeric would speak with me—”

He groans. “Y’shtola ought to mind her own business.”

“I didn’t say I disliked you crowding up in my space,” Aldera points out. “So—I suppose we’re—”

“An item. Or a couple. Whichever you prefer,” Thancred confirms.

She pretends to think about it. “Well, being an inanimate object does sound appealing.”

“I cannot claim to understand you all the time, darling, but now I understand even less than my most confused moments prior,” he drawls.

Aldera giggles, then flushes because oh  _ gods  _ she hasn’t made that sound in years. “You mean you’ve never wanted to be a potato drifting on the breeze?”

“No. Categorically no,” he says with a smile.

With a huff, she curls further into him and tightens her grip. “Personally, I think you might be the weird one. If you give me your sweets, why do you complain about me eating them?”

“And who was it that called them tribute? Hmm?”

"I don't know what you're talking about."

-

Soon after, tidings come from Gyr Abania, and the Griffin makes to plunge the Alliance headlong into war.

This is ever the way of things—so when Thancred pauses at the door to the Rising Stones, looking back at her, Aldera meets his gaze and nods.

He doesn’t smile, but there is warmth in his eyes as he leaves.

-

“I doubt I’ll ever feel worthy to sit where he sat,” Emmanellain says, and his gaze drifts to Haurchefant’s seat. 

Aldera draws in a sharp breath when she spots the portrait above it.

“...But I shall do what I may,” says his little brother, and she turns to him to find a new determination on his face.

“Haurchefant ever wished to see you and Artoirel thrive,” Aldera says quietly, “although matters of birth complicated what ought to have been simple by rights. He would be proud, Emmanellain.”

Emmanellain inclines his head for a time, his face shadowed by his hair. “Thank you, old girl. That means more than you know.”

-

“I believe the technical definition of almost every Imperial engineer, current or former,” Aldera says, slow and measured, staring Nero dead in the eye, “is ‘little bitch’.”

Nero winces. “I see you’re still sore about—”

_ “Cid made that grimoire for me,” _ is Aldera’s smiling, forceful response, spoken through gritted teeth, her voice sweet as belladonna as her hands dart out to shove him into the wall.

Cid puts a hand on her shoulder. “Hate to admit it, but he will be useful—no maiming yet, Aldera. If you liked the Ironworks grimoire that much, I’ll gin you up another. How does that sound?”

“...Acceptable,” she says, stepping away from Nero.

Nero gives her a wary look. He tries to conceal it with a sneer, but she knows he remembers how she beat him bloody, and she crosses her arms in response. 

“Play nice, you two,” Cid says, much like a weary father might.

Immediately Nero snorts. “I am not the aggressor here, Garlond.”

“You’re certainly not doing anything to help the matter,” he shoots back, breezing by the man to go help Biggs and Wedge finalize checks on the Enterprise. Nero watches him as he leaves—and no. No way.

Aldera decides not to think about that possibility. It’s none of her business, anyways.

-

Zenos yae Galvus is a powerful bastard—she can tell just by looking at him. He carries the Garlean arrogance in his gait, and there is something terrible about the measured steps with which he walks toward her.

Aldera knows that as a combatant you will always eventually reach your limit. No matter who you are, no matter what manner of divine protection you hold, Fortune is the arbiter of that day.

But still she must try.

_ To help those in need, _ and all.

At the very least she can tell she is irritating Zenos with the way she darts about their impromptu battlefield, demolishing his levin-aspected aetheric swords near as soon as he summons them. And she is distracting him, much as a mouse distracts a cat with its evasionary maneuvers.

She finds herself distinctly unsurprised that he eventually lands a hit—though “hit” undersells the matter, as what he actually does is slash across her torso and kick her in the stomach, tossing her back into the dirt as she uses her aether to direct her beloved ruby carbunkie to superheat the weak point of the blade. Though rage burns in her breast, she knows immediately that if he had meant to kill her, he would have.

Her wound is long, but shallow. And she does know Physick, well enough to do some battlefield first aid, so to spare Krile and Alphinaud that which they have no room to give, she mends it herself. It reopens while she tends to other matters, though only in small, bizarre portions, and her inattention to the matter means that by the third Physick she has time to cast on herself it is well on the way to scarring. One of many, though more notable than most.

_ Bastard, _ she thinks anyways.

-

“The Ruby Sea. Why does that seem familiar...?” Aldera looks thoughtful. Alisaie glances at her, but her attention is quickly drawn to Alphinaud slightly behind her—the way he stiffens, so slight that naught but her would have noticed, brings suspicion to her mind. She frowns. 

But he recovers too quickly for her to call him on it. He clears his throat with a small smile. “Might it not have been because of your service as a deckhand? You are deeply connected to the ocean, having spent much of your history upon it. It makes sense that you would have heard stories.”

“Perhaps so,” Aldera replies, and falls quiet, her brows furrowing in thought.

-

“...I shall have a word with my brother ere we depart,” Alisaie says, and waves Lyse and Aldera off. “Go on ahead. I shall catch up anon—this will not take long.”

They, the Leveilleurs two, wait. Alphinaud is warm at her side, a feeling as familiar as the sun on her back, and though he is nervous he also seems determined. When at last the others have cleared the room, she turns to him with crossed arms, but he speaks before she can. “Dear sister—please trust that I had my reasons for turning her away from that line of inquiry. But it occurs to me that there is none better suited to the task of watching over her than you...” He trails off, his eyes glazing over as he thinks, and Alisaie waits with a frown. Abruptly he looks up. “Again I find myself in a position where I must disclose secrets that are not mine. I... I have reason to believe that Aldera may be from the Ruby Sea.”

“Alright,” she says.

Alphinaud looks distressed. “Alisaie,  _ she _ does not know this.”

“Dear brother, I can tell this is significant.” Alisaie crosses her arms. “What you are  _ not  _ telling me is  _ how.” _

He sighs, leaning his head on her shoulder as if they are children again. “After Lord Haurchefant passed,” he mumbles, “Aldera began to have nightmares. Since Tataru, Aldera and I kept to the same sitting room before departing to our respective beds, and as Aldera frequently fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion, Tataru and I bore witness to the nightmares—she talks in her sleep, you see.”

“I am aware.” Though usually Aldera will be mumbling about sweets of some sort.

“It was these unconscious words that she spoke made me think as much... She cried out for her mother—for  _ Maman _ —begging her to take her hand. They could swim away from the village just as they had swum away from their home under the water. The soldiers could not find them that way.” He swallows. “If... If I am correct, it seems likely that this is her homeland. The Ruby Sea, Doma, and Othard itself. But what concerns me, Alisaie, is that when I attempted to speak to her about these nightmares, she shut down.”

Alisaie tilts her head. “Something tells me you don’t mean like the way Allagan relics do.”

“No. I mean I watched her eyes go vacant and her face blank. It was if her mind could not handle remembrance, and it was all I could do to shake her out of it. When I did, she had not the least clue what I had been speaking to her about, nor why she was in the Forgotten Knight when she had been in Fortemps Manor just moments ago, to her recollection—and we had departed the place an hour past.”

“This scares you,” she says, quiet, scanning his face. “That our Warrior should have such a weakness.”

Alphinaud merely looks at her, and in so doing Alisaie immediately knows she has erred in speaking such. “Alisaie...”

“...Forgive me. I spoke without thinking. I know she is as dear a friend to you as she is to me.”

He shakes his head. “No, no, I... I understand. You are not entirely wrong, either. But the larger part of me is concerned for her as the friend she is. So please, Sister, as friend and companion and sibling alike, I would ask you to look after her on this venture. I fear she will endure much personal hardship here, though I pray my instincts will be proven wrong.”

“Alphinaud, of course I shall. You needn’t have asked.” Alisaie clasps his shoulder, squeezing it in a silent request for forgiveness, and he looks at her for a long moment before nodding with the smallest of smiles. “With Thancred not here, after all, someone will have to do it.”

_ “Sister!” _

She smirks. “I speak only in truth, Brother. ...And in the interests of preserving my coin.”

“Your openness about such matters is going to result in one of them finding out about the pool one of these days,” Alphinaud tells her, shaking his head. 

Alisaie laughs—it is nice to do so openly, just for one moment—and a comfortable moment passes between them.

He clears his throat and rummages through his coat pocket. She watches curiously as he brings out a small bracelet, one with tiny, carefully-smoothed wind-aspected crystals and a crowning bloodpearl carved in the shape of a crescent moon, and proffers it to her with a flush rising up his neck. “Take it,” he says, impatient and embarrassed, when she cocks her head. “It... I... It was crafted with Tataru’s assistance, as she knows about such things and...” He covers his face with one hand. “Alisaie, please, it is for you, a prayer for your protection,  _ please _ just let us get this over with—”

“So you do love me, Brother,” she says with a growing glee, taking a step forward and ruffling his hair with merciless aplomb. “I had begun to wonder! Why, is this the improved version of the twig bracelet—”

“Alisaie!”

She laughs so hard tears come to her eyes and, when that dies down, favors him with a rare embrace. “Of course I shall take it. You are to refrain from being mortally harmed yourself, do you understand?”

“Yes, yes,” he mutters, but he returns the embrace, and she finds herself glad that no one else will ever bear witness to the moment.

They cannot have their friends know that the two of them actually engage in mushy displays of affection from time to time. No, that would completely demolish both their combined image and their separate ones, and that would simply be insufferable.

-

From the moment they set foot in Sui-no-Sato, Aldera feels almost as if she is dreaming.

They split up to search the village—Lyse to the north, Alisaie to the east, and Aldera to the west. She walks slowly, turning her head this way and that, watching her surroundings with a growing disquiet. There is a queer familiarity to this place, to the sound of the sand crunching beneath her boots, to the smell of the fish being dried in the filtered rays of the sun through the bubble, and she can tell that the villagers all watch her with an interest they did not pay to Alisaie nor to Lyse. 

But it is not until a school of fish swim overhead and she chances to glance up and see them—and by so doing see the great coral protrusion outside the entrance hanging over her, casting a shadow ‘pon the tower and the ground in just such a manner—that she understands. Memory flashes, white-hot, a jagged shard of recollection.

The same coral. The same sun. And the same tower.

All from far shorter a vantage point.

“I... I have been here before,” she says to herself, a strange certainty overtaking her. No rhyme or reason exists for it, only the one piece of memory, returned from a blank sea whose waters have long been unknown to her.

Her certainty is only confirmed when a middle-aged couple approaches them—and the woman takes a look at her and gasps, putting a hand over her mouth as she takes a step back. “Yasu?”

“Pardon?” Alisaie asks.

“Oh—forgive me,” the woman says, flustered. “Your friend—her scales and tattoos—a girl I once knew bore those same markings. But it has been many years, and my eyes grow feeble... I must have been mistaken.”

But Aldera feels a headache growing, the same she did in those furtive days after washing up in Moraby Bay, the same she felt every time she attempted to recall her own name and history. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Yasu...?”

“Aldera?” Alisaie asks, her voice uncommonly sharp as she looks to her. “Are you alright?”

“Yasu,” Aldera repeats. There is something—something just on the edge of memory, something beyond reckoning—”Who... who was...”

The woman steps forward, peering at her. “You wish to know of Yasu?”

“Please,” she rasps.

“Yasu was the daughter of my dear sister,” the woman says. She closes her eyes. “It has been many years since my sister and her husband left Sui-no-Sato, intent on becoming traders. Little Yasu was but four years of age—naturally, she went with them. Such a spirited child she was—she brought joy to many in the village, and loved to help others with tasks and chores. Like a ray of sunshine on us all.”

“Yasu—I look like her?”

The woman nods. “If I knew no better, I would think you her—and I did, for but a moment, but your eyes are different. Yasu’s rings were green, you see.”

Aldera draws in a sharp breath. “Green...”

“Aldera,” Alisaie says, forceful. “You look as if you are about to pass out. Perhaps you ought to sit down—”

“Green—they were green—” She breaks off, looking at the woman, a strange urgency overtaking her. “As a child I survived a thunderstorm that capsized the ship I served on. It was that storm that bled my eyes. Can you feel the aspected levin in my aether?”

“I can certainly try to,” says the woman. She steps forward and puts a hand on Aldera’s forehead, her own eyes a familiar green—

—and Aldera  _ remembers— _

_ Maman—Maman,  _ please— _ don’t let go, we can go together— _

—and she falls to her knees, hands fisting in her hair, lost to a flood rushing through her, heedless of the concerned couple and her distressed friends kneeling down to put hands on her, to try to draw her back to reality. She remembers: her mother had those same green eyes, the same dark hair, but she had inherited Grandfather’s nose, Grandfather’s horns. Maman had been kind and gentle, and white-haired, brown-eyed, blue-skinned Papa taciturn but sweet. Sui-no-Sato was where they were married, where Maman’s only family was, but Maman dreamed of the world above and beyond, and Papa wanted only to see it with her, and so they moved to Doma.

Yasu lived happy days there, day in and day out, helping Papa when he brought home his catch and assisting Maman in setting up her market stall. She played with the other Auri children, and the Hyur ones too, and had a talent for drawing even the shyest out of their shells, which made the parents in the village oh so happy, and Yasu did so love to be useful, to be good—

Until the day the Empire came. Until their peaceful village, which had done no wrong, was razed by Imperial soldiers in search of a supposed traitor.

She remembers.

She remembers with crystalline clarity and she does not know how she ever forgot.

Blood and fire, smoke and screaming. Papa darkening the doorway with fear in his eyes. Maman bundling her up, hiding her in cloth, as if they might try to take Yasu from her.  _ We’re going to visit Auntie, darling, where we’ll be safe.  _

But Imperials found them at the pier—of course they did. There had been no time to take the boat elsewhere beforehand.

Papa had many knives, and he wielded them against the soldiers. But there were so many of them—too many—and Yasu watched Papa fight as her mother struggled with the rope and the anchor in the dim light of the stars, struggled with the supplies, struggled with her daughter who was growing too large to be held to such a small woman for such a long time.

Papa held out for a long time.

Not long enough.

Maman only let out a single, sharp breath when Papa cried out in pain, when the remaining soldiers stared down at his unmoving form. Yasu had been deposited on the rotting wood of the pier for a time at this point, and Maman cupped her face, kissed her forehead, drew back to look her in the eyes. _ Listen to Maman, darling. Swim. Dive deep and swim, far away from here, and when you are far away, return to Sui-no-Sato and find Auntie. Papa and I love you always, and we will find you when we may. Do you understand? _

_ Maman,  _ Yasu said, _ Papa’s dead. _

_ Not yet, sweetheart, only hurt,  _ said Maman, but Yasu didn’t believe her, and Maman didn’t either.  _ Can you do this? For me, Yasu. _

_ Maman, we can go together— _

_ I’m sorry, _ Maman breathed, and pushed her into the water. Yasu cried, her small hands gripping Maman’s, and Maman’s arm jerked as Yasu tried to pull her in with her and Maman resisted.  _ I love you, my darling, my Yasu, my blood.  _

_ Maman, Maman,  _ please—

_ I’m sorry. _

_ Don’t let go, _ Yasu wailed.  _ We can go together—! _

Maman kissed her forehead again. _ I’m sorry,  _ she repeated, and magic blasted Yasu back and away, far, far away from shore, and by the time Yasu regained herself, Maman’s form was slumped half in the water and the soldiers stood over her with torches, peering out into the darkness in search of the child who had escaped their long grasp.

There was no choice. Yasu had no choice. Yasu did not want to die.

Yasu cried as she treaded as quietly as she could—she had always been afraid of the darkness, and tonight was a black night, a night without a moon, and the deeps were full of creatures that would sooner eat a little Auri than aid her passage. Only when the Imperials began to yell out orders that drifted to her over the wind with the smoke and the blood— _ ship—find her— _ did Yasu turn, and dive, and swim as far and as fast as she could, the memory of Maman’s green eyes haunting her the whole way, until she could swim no more, until she could not stay awake any longer.

“Maman—Maman—” Aldera whimpers.

_ “—dera!” _

Alisaie.

She comes back to herself in stages. When she opens her eyes, four worried faces are leaning over her.

“Forgive me,” she says with tears in her eyes to Auntie Yunagi. “I... I was once Yasu. I have not been Yasu for many years, now.”

“That you live is happiness enough, sweet child,” says Yunagi, one arm going round her back to support her as she sits up.

Uncle Ihanami nods. “When we heard what had been done to the village, we were left with no recourse but to assume you lost as well. Yugiri searched for you, but after we lost contact—”

“Yugiri?!” Lyse yelps.

“Our daughter,” Yunagi provides. “Ya—Aldera’s cousin.”

“Well now. The gods have a sense of humor, indeed,” Alisaie muses, crossing her arms and tapping her chin with her thumb, looking so like Alphinaud and Y’shtola both that Aldera wants to laugh and very carefully does not. “Yugiri is our friend, a stalwart ally who led her people to safety with us—in Eorzea—when the rebellion failed. I take it you did not know of this?”

Ihanami shakes his head. “Nay, though full glad am I to hear she yet lives. It has been many years since she left the village permanently. Though she kept up contact with us for a time, she went silent years ago, and every day we—and her brothers—think of her and pray.”

Aldera laughs, tearful, and covers her eyes with one shaking hand. “Uncle—Uncle, you will hardly believe me, but it was I who ran into Yugiri when she sought out aid and succor. Alisaie’s brother aided me in finding a place for the Doman refugees to stay. Yugiri has been of great help to my friends and I for years.”

“With her skills as a shinobi?” When Aldera nods, Yunagi sighs, though she smiles as she does. “That girl. That dear, dear girl.”

“You have the treasure of the Kojin to seek out, and we would not keep you overlong. But, Yasu, know that should you have cause to come to Sui-no-Sato, you will always be welcome in our home... even if we cannot offer you any greater aid.” Uncle Ihanami helps her to her feet and squeezes her shoulder with a brief, small smile, one she remembers as though through the blurry filter of water. “Should you see Yugiri in your travels—pray let her know that we are thinking of her always. Us and her brothers.”

Aldera sniffs, rubbing at her eyes, and nods.

-

She keeps meaning to talk to Yugiri, but there is no time nor privacy, not until they have infiltrated an imperial castrum to set the villagers of Namai free. Not until Yugiri begins to speak of her childhood, and she cannot simply remain silent any more. She steps forward, drawing Yugiri’s attention, and swallows. “There—there is something you should know.”

“I am listening,” Yugiri says, her eyes curious.

Aldera breathes in. “I too was born in Sui-no-Sato.”

Yugiri stills—her form of a pause. She watches her very carefully.

“There was once a child named Yasu,” Aldera says, quiet. “A daughter of the sea, child of Hinari and Ryouta, niece to Yunagi and Ihanami. You know this tale, I think.”

“...I do,” Yugiri whispers.

“I was young. When the Imperials came—Maman and Papa both sacrificed their lives to give me a chance to escape.” She closes her eyes. Looking out over the horizon makes her feel as if she can see the smoke and the firelight drifting in the distance, even though in reality, nothing is there. “I swam. I swam for malms and for bells, and for Maman and Papa’s trouble, Yasu—in many ways, Yasu died with them, for I forgot Yasu. I must have washed up in Kugane somehow—not all of the memories have returned to me. But ill fortune must have followed behind me for a time. Next I am aware, next my memories begin, I was being shaken awake after being fished from the Moraby drydocks by a member of the Maelstrom.” 

Yugiri is as silent as the dead.

Aldera looks down. “It beggars belief, I know. I was once Yasu. I swear to you I did not know this ‘pon our first meeting, elsewise I would have—”

Yugiri engulfs her in a tight embrace, so tight Aldera sputters and struggles to breathe. She loosens her grip in silent apology, and Aldera realizes with a shock that tears are running down Yugiri’s face.

“You do not know,” Yugiri manages finally, “how long I searched for you, my dear cousin—how long—against all hope—”

“I lived, against all the odds.” Aldera returns her embrace.

It draws laughter from Yugiri, watery though it is. “So you have. Again and again. Had I known you to be such an escape artist, perhaps I need not have worried quite so much...”

“It is luck, or perhaps the favor of the kami—only they know why,” she muses. “But I am here, cousin, and I will do what I may to aid your cause. There is still aught on your mind, is there not?”

“...There is. You are far more perceptive than you once were.”

Aldera snorts. “I was scarcely three, and you—eight? How much you expected of me!”

“I have ever been an optimist,” Yugiri says with a rueful smile.

-

“What else can I do?” Aldera asks. “If only to protect her—I must go.”

Alisaie and Lyse both look uniquely unhappy in their own ways, but they let her go, and she hardly pays them any mind. The door is hauled shut behind her. Gosetsu looks to Alisaie, who is staring after Aldera, deep in thought. “’Tis an unusual recklessness from them both. I understand personal revenge, but this...”

“They are cousins. Aldera has not had family for many years, to my understanding—like that she wants to preserve that bond, come what may. Yugiri, though.” Alisaie shakes her head.

“Cousins?!” Gosetsu exclaims, taken aback.

“It’s a long story. I think. But we all found out while we were in Sui-no-Sato,” Lyse says. “Aldera included.”

“The shadow-walker never spoke of such,” he muses. “I must hear this...”

-

All her rage is not enough—not when Zenos brings out that sword, and not when the Echo whispers the old prophecy into her ears. She knows then what eluded her before that point.

As the divine protection of Hydaelyn shields her from untimely death, so also do the Fates conspire to keep this sociopathic bastard from croaking.

_ Sorry, Thancred,  _ she thinks, though she is not regretful, precisely.

What she is is utterly furious.

“I...” She draws the word out. Zenos pauses in his approach. She looks into his cold, dead eyes as she speaks through gritted teeth. “I really, really, really hate you. You absolute weirdo.”

Zenos looks at her in blank shock. Then he laughs. He laughs hard enough that he has to take a moment to regain himself. “Oh, you’re absolutely going to live—live and grow stronger, savage little champion. Perhaps then I will have you explain your choice of words. Yes. Once I have engaged in the one pleasure left to me in this empty world to the fullness of my satisfaction...”

“You aren’t doing anything to lessen the impression,” she bites out.

But allies arrive before she can do anything to get her head lopped off.

-

“...I have a request,” Aldera says to Alphinaud and Alisaie when they have a moment away from the others. They look at her with frighteningly similar expressions that just scream a forbidding awareness—she tries to ignore that. “Don’t tell  _ anyone _ back home about this.”

“Anyone,” Alisaie repeats, suddenly looking very not sorry about something.

Alphinaud arches his brows. “Aldera, they’ve already heard—via linkpearl, as that is what Alisaie used to contact me.”

_ “Shit.” _ She puts her head in her hands. Thancred already knows. Probably already knows. _ Not good, not good— _

“What were you thinking, anyways?” Alphinaud asks, putting his hands on his hips.

Aldera looks up. She knows as well as anyone that the plan was reckless—she does not deserve that accusatory tone, though she rather suspects she will be hearing a lot of it in the coming weeks. “Yugiri is my cousin.”

“...Ah.”

She studies him.

Alisaie watches as if she has happened upon a very entertaining comedy troupe.

“You knew of my past,” Aldera says when she spots the guilt in his face. Alphinaud looks woefully at her. “Knew, or suspected—”

_ “Surmised. _ You—your nightmares. Tataru and I were the only ones to bear witness, but I could only guess with the information available to me... and you did not react well to being questioned on it, to put that incident lightly.” He bites his lip. 

Despite herself, she can feel her irritation softening. “I did not react well to remembering.”

“It was as if she was catatonic,” Alisaie contributes. “She scared Lyse half out of her skin.”

“I seem to recall you being the one to hover, Alisaie,” Aldera muses.

Alphinaud blinks owlishly at his sister. Alisaie looks at Aldera with no expression—then crosses her arms. “...At any rate, if you were curious, Thancred and Y’shtola both expressed their intent to have words with you upon your return.”

“Joke’s on them. I shall simply never do so.”

“Really?” Both the twins are peering at her now, though it is Alisaie who speaks. “Somehow I doubt that. Don’t think I have failed to notice your constant wistful sighs, or the constant scribbling in your journal—”

“I’ve been sketching,” Aldera shoots back immediately. “Would you like to see?”

Alisaie smirks. “Why yes, I would.”

“Very well. Feast your eyes upon it.” She hands her journal over to Alisaie and watches as the girl flips through it. Alisaie’s expression goes from smug to intent and searching to frustration—indeed, all that is in that journal is her sketches of the locales she has visited, of which there have been a great many on this trip, and Alphinaud, who knows of her journal-keeping habits, and the multiples of journals involved in that, looks at her sidelong. “Like what you see?”

Alisaie looks at her with begrudging respect. “...You’re actually quite good.”

“I’ve practiced from childhood,” Aldera says, and, because she knows the value of keeping her allies happy, does not add  _ just like Alphinaud. _

But she thinks it. And she knows he can tell.

And sometimes, that’s reward enough on its own.

-

“...you will be honor-bound to reveal one of your darkest secrets,” says Hien with a wry smile.

“Which one?” Aldera asks, crossing her arms. “Let’s see—there’s boiling tea with a Fire spell, apparently sacrilege, there’s eating too many sweets and Thancred scolding me, the time I stole an apple from the galley as a child, ah—”

Hien laughs. “I see you put less stock in dark secrets than you do in flowered speeches. This Thancred—who is he?”

“Thancred? Oh—” She scuffs her boot on the ground. “Another Scion. He lets me have all his sweets and then he complains when I eat them.”

“And is that all he is?” When she looks up, he has a curious tilt to his smile, but he’s friendly enough about it—this isn’t an Aymeric situation, she doesn’t think, but Gosetsu is also watching with interest—

“You’ll have to fight me for that,” Aldera says.

That smile is full of its own secrets as it broadens. “Just what I was hoping to hear. Shall we set terms?”

“Oh yes.” She will need to be strong enough to not only defeat Zenos but rub his fish face into the dirt, after all.

-

“I am going to enjoy shoving his face in the dirt,” Aldera mutters when they are safely away from the seat of the Dawn Throne. “A pissant and a piqued bastard—the scraggliest sailor fancies himself half a swaggering captain but in truth is naught but a codswalloping buffoon—”

She dissolves into mutterings that would make said sailor blush.

Hien glances nervously at Lyse.

“She’s right,” Lyse says, crossing her arms.

Gosetsu snorts. “Spoken as a true daughter of the sea—a true pirate, even!”

“Three years in service on Mistbeard’s vessel, aye,” says the subject of the conversation, absentminded, as Lyse stops in her tracks and stares at her with wide eyes. “And when I break the bastard’s axe I’ll stomp on it and then I’ll  _ make a new, better one—” _

Hien shakes his head. “Stories from the West made it to Reunion, you know, about the Warrior of Light. Hero of the smallfolk! Slayer of van Baelsar! To the extent anyone cared about the affairs of Garlemald—and some did, despite the general temperament of the Steppe. And, admittedly, ideas of her personality preceded her—the taciturn type, by accounts...”

“Truth be told, this is the first time I’ve seen her like this,” Lyse confides. “The only time she’s ever quite this animated is when...  _ huuuuuuh.” _

He blinks. “Pardon?”

“Oh, nothing. Never mind me!” She gives him a winning smile and turns her gaze back to their still-muttering friend.

-

Aldera joins Hien and Gosetsu at the table as they drink. Their conversation washes over her as she frantically sketches Alphinaud and Alisaie in their current position, and when she has made sufficient progress, Hien nudges a cup towards her. “Have some, my friend.”

“I’m a lightweight,” she warns, smiling as she takes a sip. 

“You have an awfully small frame for so stalwart a warrior,” Gosetsu says—oh, the man is _ drunk.  _ He leans over and gingerly pats her shoulder. It feels rather like what a tall giant’s idea of gentleness is, which is to say that she nearly chokes on the sake, causing Hien to put his arms on the table to steady himself as he laughs. “It is one of the more understandable things about you!”

“Really now. And what makes me such a mystery otherwise?” Aldera asks. Another sip. The burn is pleasant enough. Sights better than the old swill the crews she worked with never let her touch.

Gosetsu actually considers that, and Hien waits with a shite-eating grin. “Where to begin, where to begin... ha, I know—where, by all the kami, do you find the time to solve the problems of everyone in need wherever you go?”

“I create a time compression bubble with my aetheric mastery. Next question.” That makes Hien lose it—his head goes thunk on the table as he laughs, hard, while Gosetsu looks as if he might’ve actually considered it for a second if it weren’t for his lord’s reaction. She smirks. It’s good to see some levity—even if it did just wake Alphinaud and Alisaie over in the corner—because for all Hien rarely stands for pomp and ceremony, he also has not laughed a great deal since they returned to Doma.

“You do have a knack for time management,” Gosetsu muses.

Aldera shrugs. “I just have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, that’s all.”

“Now there is an understatement for the ages.” Hien smiles at her. “If your senses were any less excellent, the world stage itself would look different. Very, very different.”

“No pressure,” she mutters, and her friends laugh, the both of them far too drunk to hear the note of weariness she hopes she has well buried in her voice.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

She sees Thancred for but moments—moments far too fraught with all of their overwhelming concern for Krile to allow for anything more than a quick assessment of the situation. But for one of those moments they lock eyes.

_You’re still alive. Stay that way, would you?_

He nods, and he goes.

“Alphinaud,” Aldera says, turning to him. “Direct me where you would have me go. I would be of use.”

Alphinaud only nods. “There is no rest for the righteous. Right, then...”

-

It is good to see the newfound resolve in Lyse’s eyes after Raubahn takes them to his childhood home and speaks of liberty and death—of the meaning of freedom, of its price—and bids her friend remember her father’s words. To take them to heart as the Commander of the Resistance.

As it was with the Dragonsong, so it is with the “storm of blood” that hangs above these lands. Gathering and building, portentous and foreboding. Aldera remains looking out over the battlements into the Lochs as her friends depart to make their preparations for the mission to extract Krile. She had a feeling that this sort of thing would happen, as it usually does, and had taken the chance to ensure her gear was in order and her emergency supply of curatives close at hand, and so there is little left for her to do but wait.

“Aldera.”

She turns her head as Aymeric comes to stand beside her, watching the skies above just as she is. “Aymeric,” she says in return. “Are you well?”

“I am. When Lord Edmont heard of my intent to join the rest of the Alliance here, he bid me send his greetings to you,” he says, giving her a brief smile. “House Fortemps is well, lest you worry. Emmanellain has proved an excellent choice for Camp Dragonhead—meanwhile, Artoirel has the affairs of the House well in hand, leaving the good Lord Edmont free to volunteer his services to me in an advisory capacity. I am most grateful for his wisdom.”

“Full glad am I to hear it. And affairs in Ishgard?”

Aymeric sighs. “If I had known that I would have to deal with even more petty issues in the day to day as the leader of the House of Lords than I did as the Lord Commander—well, I did know, and did not feel myself suited to the task, which is why I attempted to decline. Suffice it to say I am glad to be here for the moment.”

“Ah, so it’s the same as ever.” She smiles when a terribly amused look steals across his face and he has to cross his arms to maintain his composure. “All this—it is all so very... portentous. It feels the same to me as the final days of the Dragonsong.”

At that he grows somber, scanning her face as if to search for any new sorrow. And there is—plenty of it—but that is the consequence of the life she lives. After some silent moments he nods in agreement, returning his gaze to the skies. “I have hardly been party to the affairs of Gyr Abania, but I have gathered enough of its history. It is a far younger war we face here, my friend, but no less monumental for it. Ala Mhigo is a nation, a city, and a symbol. For her liberators she represents an impossible dream—and for her conquerors, their own might. Haurchefant would have thrilled to aid the Alliance in this journey—to help those in need.”

“That he would have, aye.” 

They fall silent under the weight of remembrance, a shared burden apportioned to so few, and Aldera knows that this is not the first time—nor will it be the last—that she stands, living another day, while the ever-increasing number of the ones that were lost watch on.

What was it Temulun said to her before she left to join the others while they were on the Steppe?

_Remember that you carry the fire for them, and they for you._

A kind sentiment. Much kinder than what Frixio said to her even longer ago, when she had only just begun to delve into the larger-scale battle against the Ascians, when she had to rescue the sylph elder from the Deepcroft. _Walking one is destined for a fate far crueler than this one can imagine._

To fight. To fight, and fight, and fight, until like Ardbert she wins—and what then? What will she be after loss upon innumerable loss, when ally after ally dies so that the cause might live on with her as its vanguard? When victory is at long last achieved at the cost of all else?

But that is ruminating, and her affinity with the Echo does not allow for her to know the future. Only the past. Only what has not been. 

“Aldera—?”

Thancred! She turns, all thoughts of a dismal future wiped away at the sound of his voice, and comes to stand in front of him with just a few swift strides. He is not hurt—of course he wasn’t, he’s a master of infiltration—though she can see the ever-present worry at the corners of his lips, and she wishes she could smooth that away. There’s an uncertainty lurking in his eyes. She tilts her head even as she smiles at him. “Thancred, welcome back. Are your preparations complete?”

“Glad to be back, and yes, they are,” he replies. When he smirks, she immediately knows she isn’t going to enjoy his next words. “Though I ought to be the one welcoming you back... khagan.”

Aldera groans. “No.”

“Warrior of the Steppe, Liberator of Doma, Finder of Packages—”

She stomps on his foot. Or tries to, anyways. “Shut up!”

“Now is that any way to greet a friend?” Thancred asks, completely unaffected by her attempt on his person. “At any rate, I wished to speak with you.”

Aymeric inclines his head. “By your leave, then. Be well, Aldera.”

“You too,” Aldera calls after him as he makes his way toward Lucia. He waves without looking back. Funny man, that one.

Thancred touches her elbow. She turns her attention to him. “With me.”

“Is this about the Second Zenos Incident—” she starts.

He gives her a baleful look, apparently not finding her titling of that whole debacle amusing in the least. “Right now? No. Neither the time nor the place. But rest assured, you will be receiving a thorough scolding— _later._ I thought you might prefer to have the lay of the land before setting out. Alphinaud’s preparations are like to take bells, so we have time.”

“Don’t I know it.” Aldera sighs. “But I would like to, yes. If luck is with us I may even find some aether currents to attune myself to.”

“Then let us away—this storm will do wonders to keep our profile low.”

She shakes her head. Already the first few drops are starting to fall. “Drenched and soaked while fighting the local wildlife? It’s like I never left La Noscea.”

“You’re being awfully free with your words,” he notes.

“Oh, that.” She frowns. “Well—when we were in the East, I discovered what happened to me as a child. Or remembered, more like. Perhaps recovering those lost memories brought back some element of the child I was. Or maybe I’ve just finally seen too much to be afraid of what might happen if I speak wrongly.”

Thancred nods, thoughtful, as they leave Porta Praetoria and set out south. “Though I wish it were not so, you may have a point. By Alphinaud’s account you endured much—again. One wonders if Fate has it out for you.”

“...Were you worried?” Aldera asks quietly, and when he looks to her she sees the truth in his eyes. “Oh, Thancred, I’m sorry—”

“Not right now. The tower—there,” he requests with a careful gentleness. 

She bites her lip and nods. “Okay.”

-

.[](https://imgbb.com/)

Rainwater runs in rivulets down the weathered stone of the tower steps. Thancred is in her personal space as soon as they have cleared the door and are hidden from exterior view, guiding her up the steps with all the grace of a gentleman despite the tension strung through his whole body. He takes her hand and holds tight until they are a scant few steps away from the tower’s top, at which point he sits and brings her with him, bundling her into his arms and burying his face in her clavicle. His breathing is harsh and ragged. It isn’t the rain causing it.

Glad she took the opportunity to swap out her caster’s mitts for fingerless gloves when she happened upon a particularly fine pair of gazelleskin armguards, she reaches up and runs her fingers through his drenched hair. She divides his bangs into sections, combs them out again, does them in loose plaits, combs them out again—

“I have missed you,” he says finally, voice hoarse with the effort of keeping so much simmering beneath the surface. “When I heard you went to take on Zenos _again,_ with only Yugiri for backup—”

Aldera shivers from the cold, and his grip tightens. She presses her nose into his hair, heedless of the wet. “’Twas Yugiri that set upon that course of action. I—I felt bound to protect her. She is my cousin, you see.”

“Your _cousin?_ What?”

“My memories,” she says softly. “When I recovered my memories—it was because Yugiri’s mother, in Sui-no-Sato, called me by name. By the name I bore as a child. I was once Yasu, daughter of Hinari and Ryouta, and of the Ruby Sea. Yugiri’s mother was sister to my Maman.”

“Yasu,” Thancred murmurs.

Aldera smiles. Wry, and small, and mostly sad, but a smile nonetheless. “For better or worse, I have not been Yasu in a very long time... but I still could not bear to allow a friend to die for nothing, much less a family member.”

“...You still ought to have convinced the others. Not faced Zenos alone. But I understand,” he says, and she feels his eyelashes flutter closed. “I am upset, but I understand.”

“I am sorry, Thancred. I did not try to convince her otherwise because nothing I could say would have swayed her, so angry was she.” In truth the memory still haunts her—not unlike how Yotsuyu’s despairing glee as the roof of Doma Castle fell in on them all haunts her now too. Yugiri’s composure had been shattered. There had been nothing in her but unthinking anger, a desire for vengeance, and though nothing that now exists could have a rage matching Nidhogg’s, what spurred Yugiri onward in that moment was agony at the desolation of Doma—and love. Love for her chosen homeland.

Love, she thinks, can cause terrible tragedies.

“I know I cannot always be with you,” he says quietly. “I know. And I know you were not alone. But still. I still...”

Aldera’s heart clenches in her chest. She hooks her fingers under his chin and pulls him up to face her, rainwater and fear and all, and she traces the contours of his face with gentle thumbs. His breathing stutters; she presses her forehead against his, aware that if his bandana were not covering his eye, she would be looking into hazel and pale silver. “I’m sorry.”

“’Tis the life we live,” he allows.

She smiles, though it is not the happiest thing. “At the very least, you will be with me for this next mission. It’s been some time, has it not?”

“It has. I do look forward to seeing you in action on the battlefield—though we are like to need to emphasize speed and stealth over feats of strength, so don’t go taking on an army by yourself, dear.”

“Who, me?” she asks with quiet amusement.

Thancred huffs a small laugh. “Who else? You’re the one I call sweetheart.”

Aldera feels her face warm, and he smiles at her, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of her lips. She turns the kiss into a full one; Thancred stifles a groan as he pulls her closer, his grip tight and full of need. 

She finds she doesn’t mind the rain, or the dark sky overhead, or the rainwater collecting in a dip in the stone beneath her left foot. He is kissing her. Thancred is kissing her, Thancred cares for her, Thancred, Thancred, _Thancred—_

“Would that we could stay, or find an inn room,” he laments, pulling away with a gentleness, the corners of his eyes crinkling with the warmth of his regard when she takes the opportunity to run her nails lightly along his jaw and the scruff on his chin. “I did mean it when I said you would likely want to know the area first, though. You are not the greatest fan of surprises.”

“Then when time allows—would you—would you, um,” she stutters.

Thancred tilts his head, waiting.

“D-date? The festival—V-Valentione’s. That,” Aldera finishes lamely. She feels very silly.

“Aldera, darling,” he says, “you’re currently in my lap.”

“It’s a very comfortable lap?”

He clearly wants to laugh, but he very carefully does not. “And I’m sure you happening to end up here every chance you get has nothing to do with my willingness to—preference for, in fact—have you here.”

“I just—wasn’t sure.” She bites her lip. “It has been a few moons, all of them busy. I didn’t... want to assume.”

With that small confession in the open, several expressions flicker across his face before he embraces her again. “Well, then. Consider this full permission to assume, from now on. We have a good deal of exploring to do together.”

“Okay,” she says, quiet, and wraps her arms around him in turn, then leans her head on his shoulder and watches the rain fall. They stay like that for a little while—just a little while, but a good little while.

-

They are all looking at her.

Each and every person she passes by—everyone she talks to, even her friends—look at her with worship in their eyes. With adoration. They speak effusive praises and she can already hear a bard among the myriad adventurers gathered as well testing out a composition. And it is embarrassing. And overwhelming. And exhausting.

Everyone is looking at her. 

Everyone except Thancred.

He is looking at the sky, his eyes far off, as he whispers to himself—

_Minfilia—Ascilia—_

—and before he can notice her properly she takes a step back and veers away, nearly turning right into Alphinaud’s chest. Her friend steadies her, a worried look crossing his face. She feels cold inside. He frowns. “Aldera, are you well? You have scarcely rested since we returned from the Royal Menagerie. Perhaps you ought to rest—a hero’s rest—”

She can’t help the look that crosses her face at that.

Alphinaud watches her for a moment. “...Perhaps some small part of you has come to resent the title and the responsibilities that accompany it? I do not blame you. Still, you must forgive us if we call you ‘hero’ when you accomplish heroic feats.”

“They’re looking at me, Alphinaud,” Aldera mutters. “Please make them stop.”

“I do not think that to be within my diplomatic powers, my friend.”

_Well, it’s definitely within mine,_ she thinks, mutinous, a plan already hatching in her mind. Lord Edmont won’t mind if she drops in for a moment...

Alphinaud pats her shoulder and steps back with a wry smile. “As the Warrior of Light goes, so goes the world, Aldera. You should take pride in the good you have done—and in the good you have inspired others to do. That is no small thing.”

“Indeed,” Thancred contributes, steadying her again as she jumps near a malm high in the air, not having noticed his approach. He spares a quick smile for her. “You are a natural-born leader of men, Aldera. All these people weren’t just following their commanders. They were following _you.”_

“Aye, aye,” she murmurs, vague and weary. “I... I am exhausted. I shall speak with Lyse.”

“Oh—alright—”

She hurries away before either of them can say anything else. Their gazes rest on her back, but she daren’t look back; she will speak with Lyse, and then depart, with Midgardsormr’s dislike for the company of others as her shield to keep her from further botheration. The men of House Fortemps, aside from being adopted family, are also detached from—all of this. But she will not be able to remain there long, since her friends well know to look for her there, and she has no doubt Aymeric would happily cede her location if they voiced their concern for her, and she simply does not wish to be made to speak right now.

Luckily, she knows exactly where to go.

-

“Aldera—”

Thancred arrives a moment too late—she has already launched herself into the air upon Midgardsormr’s back ere he reaches the clearing she had so hastily departed to after Lyse’s proclamation. If she heard him, she certainly is doing a fantastic job ignoring him as she becomes naught but a black speck in the sky; he crosses his arms, frowning in her wake.

Footsteps behind him. Y’shtola, still with a gingerness due to her injuries. “I see the little bird has escaped your grasp.”

“Little bird?” Thancred asks, slightly incredulous, glancing at her as she comes to stand beside him. “Next I know your disposition toward her shall be downright motherly.”

_And wouldn’t that be awkward, considering I know for a fact she finds you attractive,_ he thinks, still not able to understand it.

Y’shtola snorts, her ears pressing back. “I am no mother. Merely a concerned friend, as I have been these past moons for Lyse. Aldera’s aether spoke of disturbance—uncertainty—and, moreover, weariness.”

“I was afraid of that. If it were something she saw at the Royal Menagerie, I think I might’ve been able to tell what has her acting so queer... but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with that. Or it’s not the whole of it. In truth, my best conjecture is that she is exhausted—you should have seen the look on her face as yesterday wore on and accolade upon accolade was heaped on her head. I hoped to speak with her before she moved on to the next thing...”

“She will return when she is ready,” Y’shtola says, “though I mislike this growing propensity for secret departures. Perhaps Mhitra will see her. Or perhaps not. Either way, I am like to hear of it.”

Thancred sighs. “And if it is Ishgard she seeks, then I shall be the one to hear of it.”

“Keeping tabs, are you.” She’s fishing for something. He gives her as irritated a look as he can muster, and she smiles, well aware of the further annoyance it causes.

More footsteps—he should not be surprised if the rest of the Scions end up here, busy bees and busybodies that they all are. “I see I am too late to speak to our dear friend,” says Alphinaud, seeming entirely unsurprised. “I had hoped to before she inevitably vanished, but—”

“Inevitably? So she did this before?” Thancred asks, crossing his arms.

Y’shtola tilts her head. “Ah, that’s right... we did not reunite with you until some moons after Azys Lla. In short, yes. Be prepared for her to have picked up... mm. Remind me what the count was last time, Alphinaud?”

“Eight,” Alphinaud says with the face of a man who has seen too much. “Eight new pieces of artisan crafting equipment, and the skill to match.”

“Ye gods.” If his tone is rather deadpan—well. _Eight._ Maybe some of the stranger rumors about her are to be believed. Like that one about the pants.

Alphinaud shakes his head. “At any rate, though I am concerned for her, she is awfully skilled at not being found when she does not wish to be. Best we return to the Rising Stones for now and rest—if that is your intent, of course, my friends,” he adds hastily, and looks between them with uncertainty when they do not immediately answer.

Sometimes—just sometimes, of course, it would not do for it to be too often—Thancred finds that he and Y’shtola are of one mind on the next step to be taken. He smiles, slow, knowing Y’shtola is as well, and it only grows when Alphinaud takes a wary step back.

“Well, well,” Thancred says. “Our little Master Alphinaud, learning his manners!”

Y’shtola nods. “Truly an act of the gods. Why, I scarcely thought I might live to see the day.”

“Surely I was not _so_ terrible—” Alphinaud begins, nervous, but it’s too late. Thancred pounces, pulling him into a headlock and giving him a friendly noogie while Y’shtola breaks face and begins laughing. _“Thancred!”_

The high pitch his whine reaches makes Thancred laugh as well, harder than he has in a day and an age, and though Alphinaud’s face is red with embarrassment, he isn’t upset. Well—not that upset. He’d be casting spells if he were really upset.

Peace—fleeting and momentary and incomplete, but peace—lingers through the rest of the day.

-

Aldera is sure she was looking at a corpse, before.

But the man who stands before her now is no corpse. Even if his eyes glow an unearthly, disturbing red, Fray is most certainly breathing.

And he offers her freedom.

Like he knows her. Like he can see into her soul.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Aldera says, quiet, aware that the concession she is making has repercussions she does not yet understand.

Fray is swathed in a darkness too deep to make out his features, but she thinks he is smiling. “Very well.”

-

_Darkness, Light—none of it matters, they’re all the same. It’s how you use it that matters._

Ardbert said those words to her ere Minfilia departed with the Warriors of Darkness to save the First from its plight. Aldera looks upon her armor now, speckled with the blood of the Temple Knights who thought to defile the girl she has just rescued, and wonders. What did Ardbert see? How did he live out his days, before the end? Did he—like her—struggle with the constraints of being a Warrior of Light?

But no—mayhaps not. He had companions, she remembers, equally burdened with Hydaelyn’s gift. Five crystals, five Warriors.

And here on the Source there is only her.

Only Aldera.

She clenches her fist and thinks: _if only the bone would crack, if only my blood would be squeezed out, then I could be the beast Zenos presumed me to be—the Warrior the people need._

But Aldera is not stone, nor made without blood, and whether she likes it or not, the path she has forged has long since been soaked in that crimson weight.

Always, always, she must fight. Always.

There is no other way. There is no other end.

Aldera watches darkness curl around her greaves.

-

When she alights on the training ground at the Nail, she can feel something watching her.

She takes a few steps in. Clears her throat. “Estinien.”

Silence.

“I know you’re there. I... I would speak with you. You who knew grief, who knew vengeance.”

Estinien lands and straightens, regarding her with crossed arms. He looks better like this, she thinks, his hair free and unbound, his rage diminished. Though he looks grumpy, his eyes are kinder. There is concern, too. Concern that makes her want to scream. “Last I checked, you did not bear the armor of the dark knight, Aldera.”

_“Please_ do not,” Aldera says, turning her head away. “I have gotten quite enough of that from the Scions. And practically everyone. You have been traveling, have you not? Seeing what there is to see? Hunting marks?”

“...Aye, that I have.”

She looks him in the eye. “Take me with you. Please.”

“There is a reason I work alone,” Estinien says, but he is not saying no.

“If you have duty to occupy you and would attend to it alone, say the word and I shall remain wherever it is that you depart from. I just—I—I need to get away.” Aldera takes the heavy helm off, regarding it. “I need to go unrecognized. They were all _looking_ at me—in Porta Praetoria, after Ala Mhigo’s liberation—I couldn’t take it. I need to be nobody. Not forever. Just for a little while. And of everyone I know, you are least likely to walk on eggshells around me.”

He watches her in silence, thoughts flickering behind dark eyes, and though she has found her belief in a higher moral system by which good deeds are rewarded diminishing by the day, she sends a little prayer to the gods and hopes. Finally, he tilts his head. “...So an excess of kindness has set you off-balance, and you would right the wrong by seeking out my abrasive company.”

“Not abrasive,” she hastens to clarify. “But I... they pretty their words and garnish them with accolades, and the tale grows beyond belief. I can hardly breathe for the stuffiness of it—I grew up a pirate, not a hero. You do not waste your words. And it was you who allowed me to express the rage I felt at Haurchefant’s death. Please, allow me to repay you in kind. I am finding that I am as apt with the blade as I am the grimoire.”

“You needn’t prove yourself to me. I shall allow it,” Estinien grants, though she can sense his disapproval in his words.

Aldera breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“I am hardly one to speak of the righteous path, after all,” he muses. “’Twas I who helped the boy along in your recent ventures, and I who chose not to reveal myself. I have seen much more of your war of liberation than you might imagine.”

She puts the helmet back on and pulls the visor into place. “Righteousness need not come in conventional paths to be what it is.”

“And you speak such while having a crisis of faith? Woe betide the fool who crosses the path of your convictions, I think.”

“Oh, enough. What are your plans now?”

-

.[](https://imgbb.com/)

They do not speak much. They fight well together, and though Estinien clearly harbors concerns over the new vocation she has chosen, he says nothing of it—and that is what she needs. To be allowed to—to exist, to be nothing, to be a shadow.

He handles the business of talking, and it becomes clear as she follows him around and serves as a second sword hand that the work he has taken upon himself is really not all that dissimilar to the Scions. Nidhogg, she has gathered, is no longer a concern. Shinryu drained the Eyes of aether, and Estinien disposed of them, though how he will not say. When they sojourn in Little Ala Mhigo for a week or so, he goes to meet a contact deep in the desert, leaving Aldera to her own devices.

It is here that she finds Fray again.

_I can set you free,_ he says again, his eyes familiar. Like she ought to have known them, days and years ago, and yet she cannot place them.

And Aldera wants to be free.

_Liberty or death. Liberty or death._ The rallying cry of the Ala Mhigan resistance, a creed passed down from father to child, the expression of a generation of patriotic souls who longed for freedom—strange, that it had brought her no comfort, that it had left her dull inside. Fray watches her as she thinks, and she has the unnerving impression that he knows her thoughts.

That he knows her, Aldera, better than anyone.

Fray’s smile is slow and dangerous. Little wonder that he keeps it concealed. _Come with me, then. Let me show you how to tap deeper._

And she does.

-

_Serve. Save. Slave. Slay._

She hears it now—the lonely voice, the wandering voice, far away and too near at once, always there, always waiting, always watching. Estinien’s watchful gaze has taken on a sharper edge. When she returns to Camp Drybone after communing with Fray, Estinien bars her path. His eyes scan the blood all over her armor. Pointedly. “You’ve been busy.”

“I have,” she replies, and Fray, who has been talkative up to this point, remains curiously silent. She glances at him, but he is only looking at Estinien with crossed arms.

“...It’s not like you to leave quite that much of a mess.”

Aldera nods in agreement. “The Amal’jaa did not leave me a great deal of choice.”

“There are times and places in which butchery is unavoidable,” Estinien ripostes, “but I find myself doubting mightily that a warrior of your caliber would be pushed to the brink by a group of beastmen.”

“Even a horde of them? They kept coming—and coming. They sought to avenge their losses... I did what I had to in order to protect the pilgrims.”

Estinien’s eyes turn cold, and while that would normally concern her, she finds that she does not care. The rite was interrupted, and she did the job she was called upon to do that she might return to the rite. What happens after or besides is none of her concern. “Have a care, Aldera. The path of the dark knight is not like that of the summoner. Corruption is all too easy to fall into without realizing it until it is too late. Lose yourself and I will do what I must.”

“I would expect no less,” Aldera says, her irritable edge softened for a moment by the steel in his words. 

“...As long as we understand each other. We depart for La Noscea next. Are you prepared?”

-

_You cannot continue to bear these burdens, Aldera. Remember who you are. Heed me._

_Heed me before it is too late._

She dreams of fire and blood. She hears screaming—then silence—then a haunting, ethereal voice, drifting through the devastated streets of a city she has never set foot in and yet whose streets she knows inside and out, as if she has spent a lifetime in its walls. 

_Serve. Save. Slave. Slay. Serve save slave slay serve slave save slay—_

“Wake up.”

_Serve—_

She opens her eyes.

Estinien. He’s leaning over her, his hand on her shoulder. “Your turn for the watch.”

Aldera nods. Sits up.

He goes to his bedroll without comment—she wonders if she spoke in her sleep, as is her wont, but she cannot know for certain. Maybe it would be better not to wonder. To simply trust that he will do as he has said should she fail in this. Should she truly lose herself.

Fray is right, though. How much longer can she keep doing this?


	5. Chapter 5

When Fray abruptly leaves, her feet guide her to him as if on instinct. She knows as well as he knows what lies beneath. That in the darkness that binds them together lie traces of history once lived.

He stands on the quay, looking out at the sea, watching the very spot where a young girl was once pulled from brine and brink and from there resuscitated. There is a jerky edginess to the way he holds himself. She understands. She feels the same way.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he says, sudden and rough, spinning to face her. “Aldera—you must see. You _must._ Look at what this is doing to us. Look at what _they_ are doing to us. These _people.”_

He says _people_ as if _monsters_ would be better suited in its place. 

Aldera looks at her feet. He’s right—she knows he’s right. “He deserved it. Every word.”

Fray stares.

And _stares._

Then he laughs, wild and on the edge of hysteria, leaning over with the force of it. There is a storm brewing on the horizon and his eyes seem darker than ever as he straightens and regards her with a keenness. “Right you are, Aldera.” He starts laughing again. “Right you are! Felt good, didn’t it? You enjoyed it—seeing that sniveling wretch of a man tremble. He almost pissed himself!”

“He did,” Aldera agrees. Though something inside her shies back from Fray’s open glee still, the larger part of her knows how much that malfeasant man deserved to quiver before her, to writhe in shame at his presumptuous mien just moments before. How sick and tired she is of all such men, of those who continue to call upon her without care or consideration, who presume that their hero will do all they ask, no matter how ridiculous, how inconvenient, how bloody rude...

“You understand,” Fray says, smiling. “You finally begin to understand. You see what they are, now. All that remains is to hearken to the voice...”

Darkness calls. Aldera goes willingly, this time, the fall a welcome embrace, and when the abyss presses in on her she hears it.

_Serve save slave slay serve save slay slave_

_They call upon the hero—the hero who hearkens to them—who smiles—who says nothing—they cry out—their voices, heard—_

The voice changes. It sounds nearer. More distinct. It is two voices in one, both low, and soft, and smooth, and it says,

_She has a voice, too._

_I will be heard. I WILL BE HEARD—_

“Aldera Lightwing,” says Fray, and the abyss slinks back. She looks at him under moonlight.

It had been evening, before.

“You stand at the precipice,” he muses. The way he crosses his arms—it is familiar. And it hurts. “But do not fear the fall. Cast yourself into the abyss, and you shall finally, finally soar. You shall be free. Free of everything.”

Aldera holds her breath.

Fray does not disappoint: when he looks at her his eyes burn with a fire that is at once dull and urgent, vivid and removed. “You will be free of all those who would presume you their hope. Who would see you shoulder their burdens and carry their wounds. ...Free from loving a man who will never love you more than he does a dead woman.”

“That’s not—”

“You know it is true,” Fray says, sibilant, silky, taking a step forward, taking a step closer to her. He lifts his hand and traces her cheek with the back of a gloved hand. “He loves her. She is no longer here. What is a man to do but distract himself? But Aldera—you need not remain and play his game. You need not be yoked to him... or to Eorzea. There are other lands than these. Lands where we are not known. Ask, and we quit this place. Forever.”

She stares.

She does not want to admit how much she wants to go with him.

But she will not ask—he knows that. He set that as the condition for a reason.

“Only when you have renounced everything are you free to do anything,” he reminds her softly.

Aldera just keeps staring. How can she—when he knows, when he knows all of it—

Fray sighs. “When we meet again... then you will give us your answer.”

He goes, the night swallowing him, and she searches the shadows for his form for longer than she would like to admit.

-

It’s not that she isn’t aware of it—that she doesn’t know what she’ll see beneath Fray’s helm should he take it off. She does. She knows it in the same way she knew her mother’s eyes in her aunt’s face, how she knew Sui-no-Sato, even with the weight of the years between and the pain of loss leading her to bury it deep beneath the surface—in the abyss, where she now ventures to.

Where Fray is.

Where her Papa is.

But this is not something they discuss, before Drillemont’s summons or after. Estinien has to carry her out of Whitebrim and she goes with the truth unrevealed.

“That was stupid,” Estinien says conversationally.

Aldera closes her eyes. “I know.”

“You’ll worry the boy sick should he learn of it.”

“I know.”

“Do you at least feel better now that you’ve gotten that little fit out of your system?”

“I—“ She blinks, realizing it’s a question that requires an actual answer. “I don’t know.”

“…Fair enough,” Estinien decides. He mutters something about mistakes and how he’s made his own fair lot of them, but she isn’t really listening.

By all rights she should feel better. But Fray is still there, waiting to take the reins, waiting for when she has need of him, and now that this is an avenue open to her—now that the darkness inside her has a form—she can never go back to the way things were before. For weal or for woe. 

But they have compromised—

_I am here,_ whispers Fray, as if in response, and she can feel his piercing stare from nowhere and everywhere at once. _Always here._

And part of Aldera wants nothing more than to seek Thancred out and find comfort in him. To hide from this. Even with her concerns, she wants to run, like he does, and isn’t that an uncomfortable, prickling thought.

“Estinien,” she says suddenly. “Where are we going?”

“Fortemps Manor.”

She slumps. “Noooo…”

“You’re injured quite thoroughly,” Estinien says, a note of amusement in his voice. “I have business beyond Gyr Abania. Ala Mhigo may be free, but its neighbors are not. Somehow I doubt that Garlemald would pass up on the opportunity to put down its prince-slayer.”

“The Azure Dragoon has experience in infiltration?” She tilts her head, narrowing her eyes at the back of his head.

He is unmoved. “Yes. I can blend in more than you ever did.”

“I’ll have you know that my infiltration experiences in Doma went _just_ fine.”

“Yes. In _Doma.”_ If there’s a more judgmental tone to be found, well, she certainly won’t be the one to find it.

So Aldera jabs her elbow into his shoulder. “It’s not like Auri are the main inhabitants of Othard.”

“No, they just live at the bottom of the sea, apparently,” he says. Damn the armor he’s wearing. She’s the one who felt the blow more, and besides—

She rolls her eyes. “You irritate me.”

“Ah, and that’s why you decided to accompany me, was it?” 

“Nice try, Mister Intelligence,” Aldera shoots back instead of falling for the bait.

Estinien only smirks—she can’t see his face, but she knows it in her heart. “Brat.”

“Oh, I’m _brat_ now, am I? Part of the family, just like Alphinaud?”

“Don’t be absurd,” he deflects, but he carries her a little more gently the rest of the way, even if they do bicker the entire route.

-

When Estinien carries her into Fortemps Manor and sets her down like a sack of potatoes on the couch by the sitting room’s fireplace, Aldera is not entirely surprised to see Lord Edmont present, looking very worried indeed.

What she is surprised to see—and reckons she really ought not to be—is Thancred and Alphinaud at Lord Edmont’s side, both their arms crossed, both of them looking remarkably unhappy. She looks at them. They look at her. She looks at Estinien, whose face is completely unsympathetic.

“Estinien, carry me out again,” she says, very carefully not looking at anyone else.

Estinien snorts. “You got yourself into this mess knowing full well that you would have to get yourself out of it. I kept you from dying, so my job is done here. Enjoy.”

“Bastard,” Aldera calls after him. She squawks in wordless outrage when he gives her a very rude hand gesture as he leaves the sitting room. “Rude! I’ll tell Aymeric you were here, groggard!” Then she pauses. “…My apologies, Father.”

“I have heard worse in my time as a soldier,” says Edmont wryly, but quickly grows stern. “Aldera. We have heard reports, but they are conflicting as they are confusing and incoherent. I would hear the truth of Whitebrim from your own mouth… and decide what to think from there.”

Aldera curls in on herself. It jostles her injuries—Fray caught her across the torso, and down it, just as Zenos had, and the chirurgeon that Lord Drillemont had attend to her clucked his tongue at the wound and told her it would take more time to heal—but Thancred’s stare is burning a hole in her head, and Alphinaud’s is nearly as bad. “Well…”

She does not want to tell this story. 

But now, in from the cold, sat by a warm fireplace, her energy sapped from the long hike even with Estinien carrying her, she finds herself growing tired. No one thing can really be hers any more—what is one more—?

_Your secrets are your own,_ Fray insists, his anger roiling in response to that of her friends. _Why must you relinquish all to them, even this?_

Aldera sighs and turns to the fire. “I found a corpse.”

“Oh, _great_ start,” Thancred mutters.

“A man who used dark arts fought a battle at the Tribunal and was killed. They dragged him to the Brume, left him there, and I—tripped over his body.” She remembers now, even as she speaks, where before it had been muddled. Where Fray began and where she ended—she understands that none of it is a clear divide. “There was a soul stone in his hands. His skills, his memory. I took the crystal. And then that memory began to talk.”

Silence behind her. She leans her head on her knees. The fire is bright.

“I do not well remember the way of things after that. There was a cry in the streets—I made to help, for that is what I do. But he barred my path, wishing to discuss changes brought about in me by touching the crystal, and… and he told me that he could set me free.”

_You can be free of loving a man who only loves a dead woman_ —

Thancred’s inhale is quiet, but sharp. Alphinaud takes a step forward. And Lord Edmont—he only continues watching her.

“Set me free,” she says softly, “to follow my heart, to defend the weak and punish the guilty as I saw fit. ‘Tis the way of the dark knight, after all. To touch what is untouchable, and in so doing see justice done, even if one must sacrifice all. I was not so interested in the last part. But I wanted to help the girl. The Temple Knights had taken her, you see. Not Aymeric’s, Father, but—“

“I know,” Lord Edmont says, his tone dark. “Aymeric would not countenance such behavior, but he cannot stop what he cannot see—what is hidden from him by evil men.”

“Fray spoke to me again of justice,” she says, closing her eyes. Blood. She remembers blood. She damn well remembers the blood. “I—I must have fought. I must have. I remember darkness… blood… Fray threatened them. Frightened men have a mouth to keep shut, but dead men tell no tales. I freed the girl and saw her back to the Brume. And after Fray spoke to me again, I sought out Estinien, who fought Nidhogg for so long. I knew he’d watch me…”

“But surely you realize _we_ would have too,” Alphinaud bursts out, his diplomat’s patience finally cracking.

“…I knew he would watch me and let me do what needed to be done, but he would not let me die.” It hurts to say it as much as she can tell it hurts Alphinaud to hear it. “I had not meant to find Fray, but find him I did, and I… I could already tell that if I did not walk the path ahead of me, I would not be prepared to meet the darkness, and it would devour me. So I walked it, and Fray and I fought, and now… Fray is a part of me, if he ever was not before, and I understand why Hoary was complaining for weeks after our sparring session now.” She leans against the couch cushions and wishes she could disappear into them.

Boots, hard, on the floor. That Thancred leaves without saying anything is—

Well, if she had not ruined things before by taking off with nary a word, she surely has now.

“…It is a tale that beggars belief,” Alphinaud says slowly, “and you are not saying much that I would rather like to hear, Aldera, but it sounds as though you have faced an ordeal.”

“Nothing that I did not bring on my own head, as Estinien says,” she admits, feeling it easier to look at him and Lord Edmont with the oppressive cloud of Thancred’s anger out of the room, and seeing the sympathy upon her adoptive father’s face seems almost more painful than the injuries, so she looks at Alphinaud’s feet. “…Thancred is quite angry with me.”

Quiet. When she glances up, Alphinaud and Lord Edmont are exchanging glances.

“You were impossible to find, though we had rather good guesses, ‘twould seem,” Alphinaud allows after a moment.

She sighs. “I worried him.”

“To put it bluntly, you did far more than that.” When she says nothing, he frowns at her. “You worried all of us. We would not soon lose you, my friend, be it to enemies without or within.”

Aldera curls in further on herself before she has to stop—the strain of stiff leather is deeply unpleasant against her bandages. Edmont approaches her, and she waits for him to say his piece, but instead of speaking he kneels down and embraces her. She looks at him in shock. “F-Father?”

“You are injured and weary, and as young Alphinaud says, you have endured much,” says Edmont, regretful and fond in equal measures. “Dear child. Dear, dear child, brave and true. How often I forget how young you truly are.”

“‘M old enough,” Aldera mumbles awkwardly. “Been old enough to do the rigging since eight summers passed me by.” 

But tears have sprung to her eyes, and she passes a hand over her face, more relieved than she cares to admit. She fully expected censure and anger—and in part she got it.

Grace, though…

“Peace,” Lord Edmont soothes as the tears escape her. The passing thought of _did he ever have need of doing such for Haurchefant?_ strikes, and Aldera cries. Alphinaud turns away, and at some point leaves the room, but for the first time in Aldera’s memory, a father is embracing her—soothing her—and this, this she may not ever have again, should fate see fit to take him from her.

So she lets him. She lets him comfort her. And she cries like a child for all of it—for Fray, and for the dead man who looked at her with her father’s eyes, for her Maman and Papa, who would not have wanted this fate for her, for her own weakness which necessitated her secrecy.

_Not enough,_ she thinks miserably, burying her face in Lord Edmont’s shoulder. _Not ever enough._

-

Alphinaud gives Thancred a sidewise look when he exits the sitting room and finds him nestled between the tall house plant and the door. Thancred looks back, his lips thinned and his arms crossed, and Alphinaud sighs. 

“Not a word, Alphinaud,” Thancred mutters. “I know.”

“She was afraid, I believe,” Alphinaud says after a contemplative moment, his eyes weighted with meaning of some kind Thancred does not care to look into. “And—well—I have come to know her rather well. Likely she believed she was protecting us from her inner darkness. Pray do not lecture her overlong, as I rather think she understands what she has done.”

Thancred gives him a long, hard stare, long enough to cause him to take a step back. “That is not my concern. You saw her injuries—even Zenos didn’t do that to her.”

Alphinaud falls quiet. Thancred mislikes the way he is staring—Alphinaud is _studying_ him, and the boy might be young, but he is every bit as sharp as Y’shtola and Alisaie when he puts his mind to matters of the heart. 

“You were not just _worried,”_ Alphinaud says, slow and considering. “You were _afraid.”_

“And what of it? Other allies have died for less.” 

The boy tilts his head, and Thancred likes that even less. “I did not say _I_ was not afraid. I was. Terribly so. I am relieved beyond measure that she is here, and that the House Fortemps chirurgeons will attend to her. But I also did not storm out of the room and leave her with the impression that I was angry at her. She holds your opinion in high regard, you know.”

“I needed a moment,” Thancred says, testy.

It only garners a nod. More's the pity. While Alphinaud's far from his first choice for a fight, he _was_ asking for some training against an agile opponent, last Thancred checked. “As do I. But please—think on what I have said. She has endured enough already.”

His piece said, Alphinaud gives him an enigmatic grimace—the closest approximation to a smile that he gets under stress—and leaves, wandering into one of Fortemps Manor’s many long, narrow hallways. Gradually, reluctantly, listening to Aldera sobbing in the next room, Thancred admits to himself that while Alphinaud is young and still a mite overconfident, he knows Aldera well enough to have a point. But he can’t very well storm back _in,_ nor does he have any desire to put ideas into Lord Edmont’s head...

Thancred glares at his boots. They’re scuffed and dirty, and he can feel one of the heels wiggling beneath his foot when he raises it. _...I might as well get these mended._

-

Aldera’s door creaks open well into the night, and injured as she is, she doesn’t even bother to pretend at sleep. The door closes again, and locks behind her visitor. She watches the shadows as they shift until Thancred emerges in the moonlight reflected through the tall windowpanes. He is dressed down for sleep. Before she can say anything, he makes his way to her side and looks down at her, silent for a moment. Then:

“Your injuries,” he says, his voice low and quiet in an allowance to the night. “How are they healing?”

She tilts her head. “The chirurgeon was none too happy that I reopened one of them, but they will heal well enough.”

“...You gave us all quite a fright.”

Aldera blinks. Frowns. Looks at him with more intent, looks for any signal of his own intent, searches him for clues. “What is this?”

“What do you mean?” Thancred asks, but she knows he understands—his voice is too neutral, his face too controlled.

“You’re angry at me,” she says. “Be angry, then. I was foolish and selfish and I scared you.”

He breathes out, a long sigh, and shakes his head. “Alphinaud warned me that you were like to disappear after Ala Mhigo’s liberation, and that you were like to pick up new skills in that time. You worried me, yes, just as you do each time you go off to slay another god and save another country, and I wish you had at least taken him along, if not me—”

“Is it that I went off with Estinien with nary a word of warning?” she asks.

And he pauses for just a moment too long.

“I asked him to because he knew what to watch for,” Aldera says. She lowers her eyes. “Alphinaud and the others would have tried to shake sense into me. But they would have missed the signs. I... I didn’t want to make you...”

Thancred is still and silent as the dead, and she knows he hates his possession by Lahabrea being brought up, but—

_—not all your secrets—_

“I would have,” Thancred forces out. “I would have watched. If I had seen—”

She shakes her head. “Let... let me put it this way. If I had fallen—Estinien fell to Nidhogg, once. The way the shadow pulls at you is all-encompassing. When you are under—all of it is different. The whole world is. All you want is for it to burn. He would have tried to save me, because Alphinaud would want him to. But if I was unsalvageable, he would honor my wishes and put my shade to rest. Thancred—how could I do that to you? How could I make you make that choice?”

“And you thought it better to simply _disappear?_ To leave m— _us_ without a word, when you were uncertain of your return?” Thancred asks, incredulous.

There’s real hurt, there, seeping into the edges of his eyes, the corners of his lips. Aldera holds herself very still, watching him carefully. “I... I don’t understand.”

“Are you—you’re serious.” He whirls and paces the narrow space between her bed and her wardrobe. She watches, uneasy, until he stops, spins on the spot, and glares at her. “You thought it would be _better_ that way.”

Aldera remains silent, because she can sense that the correct answer is not that she did indeed think that, and because she still doesn’t understand.

“You are _ridiculous,”_ he says after a long moment of visibly wrestling with himself.

“Am I?”

His glare softens into an unappreciative glower. “You are.”

“Oh,” she says, arranging her blankets around herself. “Okay.”

“Aldera, we care about you.”

She keeps arranging the blankets.

“When Minfilia told you that you were a new member of the family, did you think it a mere turn of phrase?”

Her hands still.

Minfilia. Minfilia, Minfilia, _Minfilia._

_Enough of her,_ comes Fray’s voice, whispering her own thoughts to her, the things she will not allow herself to think. _Stop. Stop. Stop all of it. She is dead. I am here. I am_ here—

And the unfairness of that tears at her. Minfilia was important to Thancred, special in a way Aldera isn’t. And she had loved Minfilia too, hadn’t she? Minfilia brought her into the Scions, gave her a home and a purpose, sought her out and called her friend and was true to her word, did everything in her power to make stepping onto the world stage the most comfortable an uncomfortable thing could be. Aldera exhales, harsh in the cold air, and her fingers clench on the thick fur of the uppermost duvet.

She loved Minfilia. She _did._

Just maybe not as much as Thancred did. Perhaps not as much as he always will.

Thancred mistakes her trouble: he makes a soft noise of sympathy, reaches for her hand, clasps it between his. “It was not. Aldera—”

_“Are_ you angry?” she asks.

He considers that for a long while. “...Somewhat,” is the eventual, unhelpful answer. “I worry still. You say this Fray is a part of you now?”

“I can feel him,” is all she says to that.

“And there is no guarantee he will not emerge again.”

_I am here,_ Fray repeats. _Not for him. Not for her. I am here for_ you.

Aldera meets Thancred’s eyes. “He’s... watching. Waiting. For when I have need of him again.”

“Comforting,” Thancred deadpans.

She smiles. A small thing, true, but it is the first inkling of amusement she has felt in so many days. “That it is not.”

Silence passes between them.

“...I suppose if you are well, and your shadow is, for the moment, not in control, then—” he starts.

“Stay.”

His face softens. “Do you want company?”

“Yeah,” Aldera murmurs, exhausted by the conversation. She tugs on his arm with heaviness in her limbs. “You can be mad at me tomorrow.”

“Oh, darling,” she thinks she hears him say regretfully as he climbs in, but she’s already closed her eyes—is already drifting—and as he curls around her, mindful of her injuries, the world falls away. And Aldera dreams. She dreams of everything and nothing, of shadow and light, of a great sea of emptiness, and beyond it... beyond it, something else.

Something terrible.

And even though she’s had enough of voices to last her a lifetime, she hears the faintest whisper of another one calling for her.

_Warrior... History must..._

_Only you—_

Emptiness breaks and shatters. Aldera loses the voice. Sun and sea surround her, and an old memory plays out, a flickering simulacrum of a world that once was and never can be again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really looked at Thancred, went "what if I made someone with emotional baggage equal to or worse than his", and said "yes. Yes, I want them to kiss". This is why Aldera can't have nice things until post-Shadowbringers.
> 
> I promise they *will* work it out, though. I don't have the "angst with a happy ending" tag on here for nothing.
> 
> While I'm here, and being nearly 50k into this beast, I will note that I made an [about page for Aldera](https://rinzukodas.tumblr.com/about_aldera) on my Tumblr. You can find me on [Tumblr](https://rinzukodas.tumblr.com/) , [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rinzukodas) , and in my [Discord server](https://discord.gg/NTJDCktDNZ) , though all of these places are fairly quiet, seeing as I'm in the middle of, well... this.


	6. Chapter 6

Thancred is still there when she wakes. She knows because there are fingers gently combing her hair, because there is the solid warmth of his chest beneath her, because even half-soused with sleep she is attuned to the soundless way in which he breathes, the soft manner in which he deliberately does all things. 

Likely he feels the change in her breathing the moment she returns to consciousness, but he only continues arranging her unstyled hair for her, humming to himself.

“Alphinaud cared greatly for Ysayle and Estinien,” Aldera says into the early morning. Thancred stops humming, his gaze flickering to the back of her head. She doesn’t open her eyes. “He denied it—he was even more reticent in those days. But they were exactly his sort of people. I think he likes the ones who get to the heart of the matter, or he wouldn’t be part of the Scions. He had... how did he put it... he had high hopes for Ysayle. When we were journeying to parley with Hraesvelgr, he would talk her ear off for bells about the finer points of diplomacy, and she would indulge him like a sister or a mother.”

His silence is contemplative, but not frigid. He twines a lock of her hair around his fingers.

“...Estinien and I did not much care for such talk. We did not talk much, in general. Most of our time in those evenings was spent tending to our gear—and Alphinaud’s—Ysayle cared for her own—while Alphinaud took up the day’s allotted amount of noise. But there were some moments where Estinien opened up. 

He told me of Nidhogg’s rage and despair, how all-consuming it was... the nature of his struggle against the power he wielded. This—balance, that he had to maintain, while being eaten up by his own pain. And while Alphinaud dreamed of a better way, Estinien entrusted me with putting him to an end should he lose the battle.”

“No easy thing,” Thancred acknowledges.

Aldera curls into him a little more, turning her face into the soft cotton of his sleeping shirt. Her voice cracks when she speaks again—not entirely for the emotional toll, but also for the dryness of her throat in the cold air, and for how little she normally speaks. “I saw darkness in him that I could not understand in full until Haurchefant died for me. Estinien—he helped. He did not ask me to bring Ishgard her justice while entrusting a broken shield unto me, nor did he speak to me of high ideals and salvation. He let me spar with him and take my grief out on him. 

All of this, the politics, the grandstanding, I have made myself suited to it. But I am not. I... I saw how they looked at me. After Ala Mhigo. And I was afraid.”

“You seemed out of sorts,” he murmurs. “I had intended to speak with you, but you took off as soon as possible.”

She winces. “I was—overwhelmed. I apologize. I did not know.”

“Not to worry. We all departed fairly quickly to attend to our various responsibilities—Nanamo was glad to hear of Ala Mhigo’s liberation, by the by.” He shifts to find a more comfortable position and props one of his legs up on the mattress. “Alphinaud and I volunteered to come in search of you when the reports began filtering in about uncharacteristic behavior on your part, and of accusations against you by the Temple Knights. Having heard your tale, it would be little surprise to me if the Temple Knights that accused you were the selfsame brigands whose lives you spared during your rampage in the Tribunal.”

“If I spared them, it was not for the intent to,” she admits. 

Oh, how Fray—she—how she had wanted them dead. How she despised their arrogance, their presumption, their clear intent to do evil, to hurt the girl for the high crime of standing up to them...

Thancred is silent for a moment. He flexes his arms around her as a muscle in his jaw works. “...I understand. They are, as Lord Edmont said, evil men. It must be frustrating for Ishgard’s new leadership to see the old guard so entrenched still.”

“I have heard countless stories of their abuses,” Aldera says. She stares at their feet, close together beneath the blankets, and tries not to seethe. “Countless lives over decades—centuries—destroyed at their whim. Countless spirits broken beyond repair. A sea of blood, flowing from the Tribunal. I have wanted to do something, anything, since first I understood what happened in the shadows here. So I suppose that was another way Fray got to me.”

“Another way?” he asks. Careful. Searching.

Her heart seizes.  _ No. _

It isn’t fair, any of it, and he doesn’t deserve to have to deal with her doubts.

So she inclines her head.  _ “’Only when you have renounced everything will you be free to do anything’. _ Overwhelmed as I was—he knew it was exactly what I wanted, that freedom. But I gave myself freely to the cause, when first I came to you, and that is what he did not understand.”

Thancred’s fingers still in her hair. “I must admit to some confusion. You continue to speak as if he—Fray—was separate from you. But he also is—was—you?”

“I don’t know either.” She laughs at the tenor of his sigh—the way it means  _ of course you don’t— _ and Fray stirs, then slumbers again, stuck in a much deeper torpor than what she had been in. “Fray was a dead man when I met him. Fray, though... I do not think even he could say.”

He nods, then hesitates. “...And there is another matter.”

“Yes?”

“You refer to him as _ he.”  _ There is a question there—underlying and tentative.

Aldera smiles, bittersweet, and shakes her head. “He is not a perfect reflection of what I want for myself, if that is what you ask of me. The form Fray took was borne of my own wishes for guidance, and so my Papa saw the light of day and the dark of night for a few moons. Or a shade of him did, anyways.”

“I am sorry.” Thancred presses a kiss to the side of her head, his lips warm and dry. 

“All things end,” she says, but even as she does, leaning her head on his chest and hearing his blood pump and his heart beat beneath skin and muscle and bone brings her a selfish gladness that this has not ended. “That which has already ended cannot truly rise again. Not in spirit. Yasu’s Papa died long ago—as did Nidhogg’s flesh, and Fray’s soul. I knew this all too well. That I ignored it was my own fault.”

He huffs in something resembling a laugh. “Now, see—when you talk like that, it makes it difficult to remain upset with you. Where was all that sage wisdom when you were running about the realm in pursuit of darkness?”

“It took a holiday,” she deadpans.

That earns her a snort. “I find it highly unlikely that any part of you would willingly take a vacation of your own volition, darling.”

“I took you to Costa del Sol!”

“That wasn’t for you,” he reminds her. “Don’t pretend it was, now.”

Aldera rolls her eyes. “I suppose you can be right this time.”

“When am I not? Don’t answer that.” When she pokes his ribs, he laughs, seizing her hand. His gloves are off and his hands are warm. She doesn’t have time to think on it further, though, as that is when he breaks off with a pained groan, pinching the hollows just below his brows.

She carefully turns to face him. “Thancred?”

“It’s nothing,” he manages, waving, which only makes her frown and reach for the soulstone bag on her nightstand. “Aldera, you’re still healing. Pray do not expend your energy on my account. I can see—”

Aldera successfully grabs the bag. After a moment of fishing she finds the soulstone of the scholar. Though she rarely uses it, preferring the summoner’s stone when not on adventures into the abyss, she remembers Y’mhitra telling her of its curious shared resonance with the summoner’s stone—she can at least provide some relief, or analyze what is wrong, though she suspects he already knows, what with the way he’s trying to ward her off. She cups his cheek, waiting until he cracks one eye open to look at her. “Let me help?”

“Aetheric healing can only do so much for this, I’m afraid,” he says, trying for a smile and landing closer to a grimace.

She sighs. “You and Y’shtola both are so  _ stubborn.” _

“I would say it comes with the territory. You are not one ilm less so, darling.”

_ “I  _ don’t have a constant aetheric fluctuation barometer in my skull causing migraines,” she says, arch, “nor am I using my life force to see that which has been hidden from me.”

Thancred gives her a sharp look. “You knew about that? —Both of those... thats?”

“Summoner. Colleague to Y’mhitra, which means by extension Y’shtola, two of the foremost scholars on theories of aetherial behavior and manipulation,” she reminds him.

He sighs. “Ah, of course, yes. More the fool am I for forgetting.”

“I may not be a genius, but I learned enough,” she says, shaking her head. “Before you came back—after we retrieved Y’shtola from the Lifestream—she and Urianger were... hovering, I suppose. I was self-taught to start with when I went to the Arcanists’ Guild, so much of my initial experiences with Y’shtola involved her advising me on the finer points of handling aether. Between her and Urianger combined I learned a great deal. And they didn’t tell me—I figured out how dangerous her Flow spell was on my own. So I started watching the both of you.”

“Concerning. ...And charming.” He pauses.

Before he can say something stupid, the way he does on purpose to try and distract whoever he’s talking to, she leans forward and puts her hands on his temples, directing a trickling flow of aether to his eye. He sucks in a small breath and holds very still. Thancred’s issue, insofar as she can determine from watching him, is that the silvered eye has become a localized pool for ambient aether, while the rest of him resembles—she can only think of a shattered linkpearl’s static as she examines his damaged aetheric network.

She knows their need was dire, and that Y’shtola is just wise enough that she would not have used Flow had she any other choice, but Thancred’s newfound trouble with attunement and teleportation makes complete sense given _ this. _

It looks—feels, more accurately—like a child took a hammer to his system and rearranged the nebulous streams as haphazardly as possible. Loosely according to an ink-stained sketch of a Hyuran body, and that’s being generous. He watches her as her expression changes, his own a neutral calm that belies the frustration in his eyes with the matter at hand. Then, thoughtlessly, she bites down on her lip as she finds a particularly snarled tangle of aether, and his eyes flicker downward, the dark of want creeping into them.

Aldera shivers. She has to focus, or else risk doing more damage, but he is warm and the thigh she is sitting on built, and part of her wants to move. With a great exertion of self-control she does not. 

But it takes a lot of it.

“You know this is far from your own fault, don’t you?” she asks, mostly to distract him. While his aether is damaged, that does not mean he cannot feel her poking around to satisfy her own curiosity. In fact—well, she probably isn’t helping matters by straddling his thigh. Thancred’s body is trying to compensate for its aetheric pathways being fried six ways to Bahamut by increasing its absorption of ambient aether. 

Which has the byproduct of drastically increasing his sensitivity to aether.

It’s a good thing she’s only using a trickle of her own to regulate the pool in his eye. She swallows.

Thancred watches her with half-lidded eyes—hiding his wariness from her. “Insofar as it is anyone’s fault, I can hardly blame our dear colleague for this.”

“Have you considered not blaming anyone?” Aldera suggests. 

He hums, noncommittal.

“...I think this damage could be repaired.” He’s making her nervous the longer he looks at her like that without doing anything about it. “Over time—it will not be easy—tell me how much of this you know already—”

His fingers graze her thighs. She sucks in a breath and carefully withdraws her aether, ending up with her hands sitting loosely on his chest for lack of an idea of where else to put them. “Y’shtola told me as much.”

“You... you would need to space healing sessions out, over time,” she says faintly as he leaves a feather-light trail of touches, traversing the softness just at the edge of her inner thighs, going up beneath her loose tunic to linger over her hipbones. Everywhere he touches pricks up at his attention. She bites her lip again because his hands are calloused and warm and so much bigger than hers—it’s not as though she was ever anything other than a stalwart sort of small, given her life, but she... she likes that, that when he holds her it doesn’t take much for his fingers to overlap at the small of her back.

That when he touches her, his palm encompasses the entirety of her breast.

The realization makes her face flush hot. 

“Would I?” Thancred asks in a low, husky voice that is positively unfair.

Aldera swallows—she  _ will  _ keep track, she  _ won’t  _ rock back and forth on his thigh until the world dissolves into stars—and has to lick her dry lips. “Y-yeah.”

“Since you’ve figured it out, clever as you are,” he muses, “I assume you would use your scholar’s stone.”

“I probably would,” she agrees. She leaves out the details: it would involve a lot of careful focus on her part, with the precision of an actual healer, not merely someone who can do healing in a pinch. He might be trying to distract the both of them, but... they could both use a distraction.

He smiles at her, drawing a light circle around her hip, and though the dawn is a grey, rainy one, and her heart labors still to recover from the doubts Fray forced to the surface, her stomach still flips at the sight of it. He has to know the way her heartbeat picks up in her chest. There is no other explanation for the way the smile turns dark and predatory, for the way that itself sends a thrill through her, for the way she holds her breath as he sits upright and his strong arms pull her flush against him.

“Careful now,” Aldera breathes, rocking a little against his thigh, her face ablaze at the stirrings of pleasure that start and stop with each small movement of her hips. “The—the chirurgeon said—”

“I’ll be mindful,” Thancred rumbles. 

And he is. His grip remains firm but not crushing, a welcome warmth against the chill that seeps in through the windowpanes and past the still-burning fire of the hearth across from the bed. She shivers, leaning into him, and gasps softly when the change in angle yields a sharper spark of levin—one that rockets upward from that central apex between her thighs, as opposed to the dull sparks of before. “Oh—ah—”

“There you are, darling.” His lips descend on her neck. Aldera’s breath turns ragged as he presses a line of soft kisses down it until he reaches the juncture between her neck and her shoulder. He speaks into her skin there, each brush of his lips against her making her pulse jump. “I’ll admit—this is what I wanted to do to you when we went to that tower in the Lochs. To undo your armor and have you writhe against me in all your finery, making those soft noises of yours.”

The low timber of his voice is doing things to her. Combined with the imagery—gods—

“Thancred—” she whispers.

Soft warmth turns into sharp sensation as he employs tongue and teeth to graze at and suck on the sensitive spot at her neck, and she gasps again, clutching at his shoulders. He smiles. “What would it have taken to get you to cry out my name repeatedly there, I wonder? With the rain falling on us and the tower malms away from any settlement, no one would be around to hear, and you would be free to sing pretty for me.”

“It’s a good question,” she manages, wholly distracted by his fingers beginning to move. He traces the line where her smalls meet her thighs—where the seams sit—and her tail flicks without her conscious control, landing on his leg with a heaviness. It makes him laugh. He leans into her, reaching out to stroke the scales of her tail, and the next roll of her hips sees her burying her face in his neck with a whimper. “Thancred...”

Tension is winding her up tight. Just a little more would see her over the edge, but it remains frustratingly out of reach.

But Thancred is here, Thancred is  _ clever, _ she can feel his clothed erection straining into her inner thigh—

“Tell me what you need,” he says into the base of her horn, holding himself still as she works herself against him.

She makes a brief, wordless, whiny noise. “This has incentive for you too, you know.”

“Oh? Then maybe you should tell me how it benefits me.” Gods _ damn _ his steely strength of will and self-control. He could be moments away himself and she would only know from the involuntary twitches of his body and the strength of his grip.

Aldera reaches down for him, pausing momentarily to shimmy his pants and smalls down just enough to free him, and then—gently—she brushes her thumb over his tip. She’s treated to a full-body shiver and a half-aborted thrust, and yes,  _ yes, _ there, just like that, now to get him to do it again... “More of that.”

“Hmm...” Thancred pretends to think it over, but his pupils are blown out with want, and Aldera helpfully, lightly skims her fingers down the length of him, following the vein running down the underside of his cock. He closes his eyes with a groan. “ _ Aldera.” _

He’s beautiful like this—with his head tilted back, a flush beginning at his neck, brows drawn together and mouth slightly open, distant firelight and pale morning casting him in warm light and cool-toned shadows. She has to kiss him. She  _ has _ to. And so she does, losing track of time and her own self as she takes the pleasure he has to give again and again, the troubles of her heart silently, momentarily quelled by him—by his hot skin and clever fingers and his even more clever tongue—and if there are shadows in his eyes—if he is himself trying to forget—

Well. She is too.

-

They have some happy days, after what comes to be termed as the Fray incident. 

Thancred unequivocally refuses to let her out of his sight—something that, in a subversive indication of where Fray’s—her—her priorities still lie, pleases her beyond measure. So it is that she ends up accompanying him in his responsibilities for a time, and then he in hers, an opportunity that sees her learn far more of the Scions’ information network than she ever knew before... and sees him frequently give voice to his distaste for chores even as he helps her with all the various tasks she picks up, large or small, to the best of his ability.

He is a good man.

Even if he doesn’t seem to believe he is.

But Fray’s truth weighs heavily on her mind, even as they smile and laugh together. Thancred is mourning Minfilia still. That she cannot begrudge him when it is clear that they meant the world to each other—and she knows what Minfilia said to her, she does, but—

Each passing day sees her care just a little bit more, and that only makes it harder to bear. He cannot move on. She cannot, either, not from Haurchefant, but at least she is  _ trying, _ isn’t she?

All her vaunted courage fails her, though, when she considers broaching the subject again with him. 

She thinks of her life. Her childhood. The years and years spent alone, without the family Thancred found when Master Louisoix caught him stealing as a child, drifting from ship to ship to earn her keep. They seem almost dreamlike now—they had been dreamlike  _ then, _ what with all the time she spent half-dazed and daydreaming of worlds that have never been, consciously mute for unconscious reasons. Alone she grew, watching families laugh together and play on passenger ships, watching sailors grow to regard each other with keen understanding on mercantile vessels that sailed together for years on end.

There had been people. A few of them. A ship cook, a wandering mercenary, a soldier of the Maelstrom. But the westerly winds inevitably blew and saw them move on, and the strange little changeling was left behind.

Being invited into the Scions—a promise of permanence—had been too good to be true.

Aldera well knows: all things end. All life has its seasons. It must cede to what is to come. Summer to autumn, winter to spring—the land flourishes, sleeps, and blooms again, each blade of grass changed for the passage of time. For living beings like them, the only question is when.

When does it end? When does _ this _ end?

She doesn’t know when this ends. When Thancred’s interest fades and he returns to the grim, serious, tired man he has become since the Warriors of Darkness left with Minfilia to the First.

And it terrifies her.

-

“I apologize for my lateness,” Aldera says, flushing at Lyse and Alisaie’s wide-eyed gazes as they take her outfit in. Limsa Lominsa is pleasantly overcast today, so she needn’t have gone for the accompanying gloves to her frilly dress and plain tights, and the stares she’s been getting even aside from her friends rather make her regret the choice to go all-out in her fashion, even if she did see some hooligan wearing a metallic purple suit far more outlandish than her choices (naturally, she thinks she’s seen that same suit in the Manderville) on her way here. “One of the head chefs here—I know them. They wanted to catch up...”

Y’shtola sighs with a smile that is halfway to a smirk. “Ah, one of your many contacts here. ‘Tis a wonder I never encountered you before I did.”

“Not so. I spent most of my time on the sea,” she says by way of explanation as she takes a seat and gladly accepts Y’shtola’s silent offer of tea.

Lyse nods. “I knew you’d spent most your time sailing before, but your composure when Caravallain’s ship got drawn into the Sirensong Sea was something else.”

“A fair sight better than my dear brother’s,” Alisaie contributes.

“I suppose my threshold for trouble at sea is somewhat removed from that of one who does not frequent it,” Aldera muses. “It did take being shipwrecked...”

“Not terribly auspicious to speak of in a city that thrives on the sea, is it now?” Y’shtola says, sipping her tea.

It makes Aldera smile. Alisaie and Lyse are peering at her with poorly-concealed interest. “Oh, no. But a sailor will tell tales regardless—part of the derring-do of nautical adventures...”

-

She knows the moment Fordola sees it. 

Turnabout is fair play to Hydaelyn, it would seem, no matter the artificiality of the Echo. Aldera lives it as Fordola lives it—or re-lives it. The ravages of her past and the seething doubt she holds within surge to the front of her mind’s eye as her interior life is bared to the Butcher. If it were not for how often she has walked in those days, for how many nights she spent at Haurchefant’s grave, the remembered agony would bring her to her knees—but instead she stares Fordola in the eye as it happens.

As Fordola sees it all.

Sees everything.

Haurchefant and his love for her. How he smiled in the moonlight. The dearness with which he held her, the same dearness that drove him to protect her, the same dearness for which he died; the soul-shattering whisper for her alone—how ever since she has flinched when she is told not to look at someone so. 

Ysayle who bore Hydaelyn’s gift, who cried out for warmth in a frozen land, who thought death would bring redemption—who, unbeknownst to any other alive, held Aldera in the dead of night on the road as her blinding fear reached a peak and would not be brought down, murmuring the Dragonsong into her hair. 

All her pain. All her sorrow. Fray. Gaius, Ilberd, Ardbert, and a thousand others along the way—Yotsuyu’s demonic glee as she bit out her pyrrhic triumph—the madness in Zenos’s eyes as he looked upon her and called her a beast before transforming into one himself—and then—and then, at the heart of her—

Minfilia. 

_ Thancred. _

How he looks at her with so many secrets behind his eyes.

_ You could be free from the thankless reward of loving a man who will never love you more than he does a dead woman. _

That it is  _ this _ that burns, that all the rest of the world’s pains and plagues she has simply resigned herself to, but this is what she cannot bear—it burns at her, eating her from within, gnawing on the hungry bones of a child who went without love, went without kin, went without hope before finding it and then watching it be extinguished again in front of her eyes. She is supposed to be  _ stronger. _ Unukulhai could not have known how keenly she felt his self-doubt. All those she loves, all those who look up to her, all those who care for her, they are relying on the Warrior to be their succor, their aid, their sustenance.

And at her heart she is a girl in love with a man who cannot love her.

There is nothing for it. There is nothing to be done.

There is simply duty, endless, and the fight—the endless fight from which there is no escape. The fight she must fight and fight and fight again until she wins, or until she grows too old to fight and her usefulness expires, and her legend fades with the corpse of a faceless woman. Fray had tried to free her from her fate, but Fray had fallen to her.

_ Convince themselves that she can be controlled, _ Fray’s memory repeats, broken on the flagstones of Whitebrim.  _ Our Warrior. Our Weapon of Light. _

The soldiers of Whitebrim had seen the darkness within, but they had not understood it. Even now, Aldera knows what she is.

_ I am the weapon of Fate, _ she is saying to Haurchefant’s grave, some short days before now.  _ I wish... I wish you had not... _

Fordola wakes from the vision, and Aldera wonders at how the world’s workings have aligned themselves so that this woman—not an ally, and not a friend, but rather someone she had pitied—is the one to see it all. The one to know.

The one who has experienced what it is to be Aldera Lightwing.

“You,” Fordola breathes out, taking a step toward her, ignoring how her friends tense. Or perhaps not: she stops. Stops, and looks at Aldera with dawning horror in her eyes. “Y-you—all that power—all that pain—”

Aldera waits.

“It’s too much,” she says faintly. “Too much for  _ anyone.  _ The things they’ve  _ done _ to you—the lies, the betrayal, the endless  _ fighting—” _

Alphinaud’s stare is burning a hole into the side of her face. She almost wishes Fordola would get on with it.

“And yet still you stand unbroken—how? How?!” she demands, and Aldera has the feeling that were Fordola not too proud, there would be tears. The ragged edge to her voice threatens as much.

Aldera only holds Fordola’s gaze. When she speaks she is calm beyond measure. “You saw, did you not?”

“I did, but—”

“For those I have lost,” Aldera says, and it feels like the gears of time locking into place. Haurchefant. Ysayle. How they left her when Estinien was saved—when Nidhogg’s eyes were wrested from his armor—and how, after, she had been alone. She crosses her arms. “And for those I can yet save.”

Not only does Alphinaud’s stare burn, but Lyse and Arenvald’s too, and Fordola is looking at her as if she has never seen Aldera before. And perhaps she has not. Perhaps before she saw the Warrior, the heroic goody-two-shoes who lived in naught but a world of dreams where evil men may die and good men might live, and perhaps now there is no going back to before she saw deep into the heart of her adversary and saw someone whose determination to fight is not based so much upon ideals as it is necessity in the face of a universe that has chosen its pawn and shall not soon let it go.

She knows that Aldera is not entirely telling the truth.

“Damn you. Damn all of you,” Fordola grits out eventually.

Aldera turns before anyone else can speak. “If we’re done here... I’ll be going.”

“Aldera—” Alphinaud starts, but perhaps Fray has influenced her more than she thought, because she feels little guilt when she exits the premises.

-

It is happenstance that Pipin catches her before she departs the Ala Mhigan Quarter and directs her to an audience with the sultana. Aldera allows herself a moment to pretend she has no idea how she got here, but she does, and seeing Nanamo well will do her well, and so she goes.

-

The way her heartbeat quickens several paces when she catches sight of Thancred alarums her—that there is business afoot allows her to ignore it, and that she has as bad a feeling as Raubahn and Arenvald about what is to come at this meeting is only of further aid in letting her put aside personal feelings. Still, the way his eyes scan her for injury while the rest are talking is... nice. It’s nice.

-

That she sees the summoning of Lakshmi coming yalms away does nothing to quell the sharpness of the fear in her breast when she hears Raubahn roar that the guards were already turned.

_ Thancred,  _ she thinks, the blood leaving her face.  _ Thancred was outside. Y’shtola was outside! _

“Aldera? Steady now,” Arenvald says, glancing at her. He’s one of the ones who looks up to her, she knows. There’s fear in his own eyes as he tries to be brave. “I’m sure they’re fine. The guards must’ve been enthralled beforehand.”

Aldera gives him a thin smile. “The Echo speaks of small things. Pray pay no attention to my mind’s wanderings.”

He doesn’t look entirely convinced, which is probably wise of him, all things considered.

There is rage and fear in her near the surface as she fights, now, Fray’s thoughts bleeding into her own, the divide between them dissolving as she delves deeper and deeper into the abyss for the power to fight Lakshmi. 

Oh, she has always been afraid in battle—anyone sane is, whether or not she still qualifies as such. It was a distant thing, though, and perhaps her choice to become a summoner reflected that in more than one way. Her carbuncles fighting alongside her—in some cases for her—let her stay apart, and so frequently has she provided support to those more stalwart than her.

The fear comes because even though she and Arenvald keep pace with each sphere of aether, if she fails, it means more than simply her. There are people she loves here: Alphinaud, Lyse, Raubahn, Y’shtola...

Thancred. 

“Over here, fuckface!” Aldera screams, the heat of battle combining with the white-hot, fear-fueled rage to loosen her tongue as she sprints to stand behind the primal as she has so many other beasts before. Lakshmi swings to her, enraged, and Aldera snarls at her as the darkness brings a fresh spate of strength to her limbs. “You heard me, bitch! I have killed you before and I shall do it again—for every grotty ilm you continue on—again and again and again and again!”

“Aldera, what in the hells—” Arenvald starts.

But she isn’t listening. Fury consumes, and darkness swirls about her; she can use it, she thinks, to distract this being of Light, aspected as it is. “Arenvald—focus on the godsbedamned spheres!”

“Understood!”

Soon enough Fordola joins them and the tide of the battle is turned. Aldera fights as is befitting of a weapon, she well knows, and Fordola is too good a soldier not to focus on the battle at hand—but after. 

After, when the deed is done, she looks at Aldera sidewise. “Your eyes... I’d control yourself, if I were you.”

_ How dare—?!  _ Fray snarls.

“Right you are,” Aldera says, closing her eyes, pushing it all back down. Back below. She will have time to scream and work herself into exhaustion later, even if she still feels as though she could go ten more rounds against Lakshmi’s puerile presence before falling.

Just in time, too. Those who evacuated come rushing back in, Thancred and Y’shtola behind them, and relief hits her like a punch to the stomach.

Alive. Not enthralled. 

She has not thanked the gods in recent moons, but she does thank Nymeia now, for what little such things are worth to the one who fights with Hydaelyn’s blessing.

-

Lyse clears her throat after Fordola leaves. “Aldera...”

_ Oh, great, _ she thinks. She directs her most stoic stare at Lyse, crossing her arms, but Lyse knows her too well—she isn’t fooled.

“Was that you I heard screaming ‘fuckface’ at Lakshmi?” Lyse inquires with too much innocence to believed for even half a second.

Thancred coughs suddenly, a poor attempt at disguising a snort, while Alphinaud looks at her with both brows raised and Y’shtola smirks—all three having borne witness to her losing her temper before, though rare was the occasion before Fray.

Arenvald, perhaps oblivious to his impending doom, regains his breath at precisely the wrong moment. “That it was! Shocked me half out of my skin, it did—”

“Is that  _ so,” _ Aldera says with a note of menace in her voice. Wisely, Arenvald shuts his mouth. “Perhaps the battle disturbed the aetheric balance in your ears. You were running about rather frantically. In fact, I do believe I saw you diving for a sphere at one point, and the hit to your shoulder did not look pleasant. You ought to rest.”

It helps that she actually means it, however fueled by spite she currently is, because Arenvald subsides with a muted nod. Likely he did not think anyone had noticed the way he is standing, but that careful looseness with which he keeps his sword arm still is likely known to all present as the sign of injury that it is. 

The thought wearies her—that she should recognize such on sight.

“You  _ all _ ought to rest.” Raubahn looks far too amused, but she hasn’t the heart to bully him as she just did Arenvald. “In fact—I’m making that an order. The Flames shall handle the meeting; the Scions are to stand down, for the moment.”

Oh, no. No no no no. “I can—”

“You won’t,” Thancred interrupts, hand on his hip. She glares at him. “I know what you want to say, and let me assure you that they have the patrols well in hand, Miss Busybody. Be a darling and follow the General’s orders.”

He tilts his head, his eyes burning in silent challenge, and she glowers for a moment more before subsiding. Y’shtola looks between them with a keen interest. Aldera sighs. “...Fine.”

“My thanks,” Raubahn says, and the amused glint in his eyes has only intensified, if anything. “If I see you with a sword in hand before tomorrow, I shall duel you myself, and I think you shall find me a sight better equipped than you to do battle in narrow quarters such as these streets. Even if I am an old bull.”

Just for that she raises a brow at him. “I shall consider your invitation.”

An answering smile shatters the impassive expression he has been holding, and she knows that if there is time for a match later, he would gladly take it.

“Well, with that settled, how about I show you all to your rooms before I reconvene the meeting?” Lyse asks with a grin.

-

There is a waterfall in her room.

Aldera stares at it with raised brows while Lyse waits, her hands clasped together. 

“...Impressive,” Aldera says eventually.

“Not half so impressive as the way you moved during that fight,” is the cheerful response. “I’d heard you’d picked up a blade, but wow, Aldie! That was incredible!”

“Did you just call me ‘Aldie’?” Aldera asks, staring at Lyse, now, aware that the exhaustion she is now feeling down to her bones makes her voice a little lower than intended. Lyse blinks. Aldera holds out a hand before Lyse can falter. “No, no, it’s fine, I just—no one’s ever given me a nickname before.”

“Oh? Thancred has plenty for you, I thought,” is Lyse’s sly response as her lips curve into a smile.

Aldera shakes her head, setting her knapsack down by the foot of the bed. “If you consider how rarely he calls any woman by their given name, then perhaps so.”

“Reeeeeally.” Her friend rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet—a motion she hasn’t seen in a day and an age, and one that reminds her of lighter times, albeit times when Lyse was still masquerading as Yda. “’Cause I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t seen either of you half as much as Alphinaud has, but you know what I’ve noticed?”

“No,” Aldera deadpans.

Lyse bounds over to help her with the straps of her armor. “He hasn’t called anyone else ‘darling’ or ‘dear’ or any of it—not since you guys found him in the Dravanian hinterlands. Only you.”

“He’s had the loss of Minfilia to contend with,” she comments, sparing Lyse a quick pat of thanks before beginning the long process of divesting herself of the chest piece. She clucks her tongue once she has it off and in her hands—she’s going to have to spend some time attending to it if she wants it to be in top shape. “I knew I ought to have tried harder to avoid that aether beam...”

Her dear, nosy friend leans over her shoulder to see what she’s talking about. When she sees the damage, she sucks in a breath. “Ooh, yeah... but don’t get me off track!”

“You have to have a track to be on in order to be diverted from it,” Aldera says.

Lyse huffs. “Oh, come on, Aldie. You were ready to go fight fifty more battles until he told you not to. Can you really blame a girl for being curious? Especially since before the banquet—”

“Does everyone know about that?” she asks, exasperated, and sets her armor down next to her knapsack. “He was right about what I wanted to do and what I needed to do. ‘Tis as simple as that, and little more.”

“Boo. No fun.” Lyse makes her way over to Aldera’s bed and flops on it with crossed arms. 

Aldera fishes out the pendant she ever keeps beneath her shirt and looks at it in the candlelight. “If you must know something, I did not clearly see him until I rescued him from the Praetorium. Lahabrea did not care for Thancred’s body. ...He was so thin.”

“I remember,” says Lyse, quieter now.

“I feared for him,” Aldera says, closing her eyes. “Had I been too late? Was there aught I could do for so brave and kind a colleague—one who deserved better than such a possible fate? I am no healer. I felt powerless. When he woke, for the first time I saw in him the man. One who was very, very tired, and struggled to sit up with his own strength. ...He was mortal. And while I was not too late on that occasion, I understood better than before that walking the path I have chosen could very well mean the loss of any and all I happened to hold dear.”

Lyse is quiet.

Aldera turns to her and finds her looking down at her feet. “Lyse, I was afraid.”

“What?”

“I too am mortal.” She crosses her arms. “I will not fall to any primal’s influence, true. Hydaelyn’s blessing has made that sure. The Warrior of Light, they call me, and it, too, has become truth. But who am I without those dear to me? Who are any of us? Before the Scions I had no such luxury, and now that I do, it is a constant struggle to weigh the possible consequences my actions will have for those of you who continue to stand by my side. So... it seems only right to give any of your words due consideration when they concern me. Is that satisfactory?”

“Aldie...” Lyse’s face is soft as it is sorrowful, and she stands quite abruptly to take Aldera’s hands, looking at her with emotion swimming in her eyes.

She looks away. “If you would respond, then respond. If you do not, then do not.”

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go,” is the watery response. “I didn’t know you cared that much.”

“...I do,” Aldera says. “Very much.”

“I know, I know, I just—oh, forget it—” Lyse bundles her into her arms, her grip tight, and does not let go.

-

He climbs in through the window later that night.

While exhausted, sleep did not find her, and so she relocated to the ornate table in the corner, where she is now reading a tome on arcanima by candlelight.

“You’re ridiculous,” Aldera says without prompting or looking up, though she follows the way his boots hit the floor with every sense outside of that. Thancred shrugs— _ guilty as charged, _ that shrug says—and in several quick paces crosses the room, locks the door, and takes her by the shoulders, looking her up and down. “I was not injured. Arenvald, though—”

“I know better than to trust your word,” Thancred informs her.

She huffs. “Well then. I trust you will not mind should I take the liberty of manhandling you to check for injury?”

“You can manhandle me whenever you want, darling,” he says with a smirk, but soon his levity abates, and he searches her face for signs of trouble. “As stressful victories go, that was one higher up on the list than most. Are you well?”

“I wanted to keep busy afterward to exhaust myself,” Aldera admits.

Thancred only nods. “...I understand. Though I am glad you deigned to listen to me.”

“What? You were right.”

He smiles down at her. “That’s a new phrase in your vocabulary. Learning every day, are you?”

“Thancred,” she complains, reaching for his arms to pinch and instead finding herself being pulled further into his embrace. She grumbles wordlessly into his chest, but he’s warm and solid and real, and the night in Gyr Abania brings a kind of chill with it that sits just on the edges of one’s senses, and... and she has missed him. More than anything. “Are  _ you  _ well?”

“Perfectly peachy. Y’shtola mended what nicks and scratches I got, and truth be told, we were in nowhere near as much danger as you all were.” When she looks up his expression has darkened, and he is looking not quite at her, staring at the floor with stormy eyes. “What are a number of enthralled compared to the primal they worship, after all? I regret that they delayed us from lending you a timely hand.”

“We had Fordola,” she says.

He makes a face.

“I know, but she is a good fighter. She wouldn’t have survived long under Zenos’s direct command otherwise.”

“Forgive me if I don’t leap for joy,” Thancred murmurs. “There are people I trust not to put a dagger in your back, and then there are people I trust about as far as I can throw them.”

Aldera hums and runs her fingers up his jaw, through his beard. “The Echo she was implanted with—she saw my life.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she says, leaving out that the experience had left her exhausted and aching: she’d fully intended to go visit Haurchefant’s grave before receiving word of Nanamo’s summons. “It affected her, to say the least. She is an opportunist, and her goal was always freedom. I suspect that she has little reason to turn her blade against me again for the time being.”

He considers that for a moment, then sighs, leaning into her touch. “Optimistic, but reasonable enough. I take it by your certainty that you also saw portions of her life?”

“As always. Ala Mhigans stoned her father, and the Garleans stood by and watched it happen. She swore vengeance on all of them from then on—the people who killed him, and the people whose inaction doomed him. And she was ruthless enough to sacrifice everything for that goal. I think Lyse’s kindness is unraveling everything she has understood the world to be...” Aldera pauses as Thancred makes an acknowledging noise and scoops her up, sweeping her off her feet and just holding her for a moment. She goes willingly enough—she does like it when he holds her—but she blinks at him in confusion even as her tail winds around his arm. “Thancred? What are you doing?”

“Relocating you,” he replies, “since it seems like this is a long story, and I like to be comfortable.”

“Says the man who actively chooses to keep his arms bared in the freezing cold.”

“That’s different.”

_ “How?” _

Thancred presses a quick kiss to her lips and gives her a slow smile with half-lidded eyes. “Because, darling, that’s fashion.”

“Ridiculous man,” she snorts.

“And yet you appreciate it,” he points out as his smile morphs into a fool’s grin. “My arms stay warm through the heat of your ever-frequent gaze, my dear.”

Aldera feels heat creep up her cheeks, and she buries her face in his shoulder.  _ “Thancred!” _

“What? Can a man not point out the adoring gaze of his lover when he sees it?” he teases.

“Shut up,” she whines. “Embarrassing.”

Thancred is laughing—she can feel his chest vibrating as he restrains himself with some effort. He settles on the bed, but he doesn’t put her down; instead he holds her closer, pressing several more light kisses to her head, ignoring her discontented noise. “You are adorable.”

“I am formidable and intimidating,” Aldera argues.

There’s a smile in his voice. “And adorable.”

“Hmph.”

Thancred noses at the side of her head. “What brings this shyness on? You’re not half so when I’m making you gasp as I murmur songs into your skin under the starlight.”

“Lyse just made me remember when we were speaking earlier,” she mumbles, the reminder of the circumstances not a few of their rendezvouses making her flush deeper. “Before the Praetorium. I just—you were very handsome, and when you tried to ask me questions, I could scarcely think. Because you were, um, because you were speaking to me.”

“That’s why?” He finds that delightful. “And here I thought you had some reason or another to find fault with me. You certainly took long enough to scribble out answers in your journal.”

“Yes, well, I was mortified at the possibility of producing an uninteresting answer, and so I chose my words with extra care.” Aldera’s tail flicks when he laughs, even though his laughter is distinctly charmed and far from mocking. Her face could set his shirt on fire—his nice, tight-fitting, sleeveless shirt that fits his torso like a glove, and shows off his musculature, and which bears his scent, and...

He runs an affectionate hand down her side that mollifies her. “Darling, rest assured that the last thing you have ever been is uninteresting. Even if you do keep refusing to tell anyone how or why you served on Mistbeard’s vessel for three years.”

“Not going to, either,” she says, firm. Some promises—especially those made by and upon the sea—one stays bound to, even past becoming a hero of legend.

Thancred sighs. “Worth a try. Still, I was never bored by your answers, trust me. Your company was very welcome, even then.”

“That so?” Aldera is surprised to hear it, given how distracted he had been in those days. Of course, the benefit of hindsight is clarity, and now she knows that what had truly been driving his behavior was his possession by Lahabrea, but still.

“Oh yes. A skilled fighter and an adorable woman—when you seemed unreceptive to my flirting, I was far more disappointed than I realized. And I really ought to have realized,” he says, wry, rough, a note of vulnerability seeping into his tone. “When you came to me for advice I was all too glad to give it, and I began to look for you when you were not there. I did wonder why F’lhaminn kept teasing me...” 

She blinks. “F’lhaminn? Really?”

“F’lhaminn and I have known each other for some seventeen-odd years—she was one of my first contacts in Ul’dah when I began my watch on Amal’jaa activity in Thanalan. Her husband, before his passing, was my introduction to Ul’dahn intrigue,” he muses.

Aldera makes a noise of dawning understanding. “When she spoke to me, she frequently brought you up. It always seemed like a test.”

“She must have liked you from the start, then,” Thancred says, shaking his head. “F’lhaminn has an astute eye for discerning the inner workings of the heart, but in her youth she used that talent to considerably more short-sighted ends—it was often that she wielded it with a ruthlessness. Age and loss have softened her. But she still prefers to be underestimated. If she was obvious enough for you to have an inclination as to her meaning I cannot think it anything but deliberate.”

“Huh.” She had full underestimated F’lhaminn, it seems.

His hands roam up and down her body with less intent and more absentminded desire simply to feel her. It occurs to her that there is a restlessness in his touch right now. He sighs, one hand coming to rest below her breasts with his thumb brushing up against the side of one of them, while the other settles heavy across her legs in the cradle created by the angle she has them propped up at. That her heart suddenly aches is incalculable; she turns to hide her face in his neck, closing her eyes and breathing him in.

They are, the both of them, still alive.

And for the moment that is not like to change. 

Perhaps his thoughts run along the same track—he turns to rest his head upon hers, breathing out slow and soft. “Some small wonder—I found a place near the gardens that must have been used by the royals who once lived here to rest. Trees on the rooftop, surrounding a little alcove with a bench in it. Should time allow, I thought you might like to see it.”

“I would love to,” she says, heart throbbing at the sweetness of the thought and the gesture. 

-

Aldera coughs politely. And loudly.

Hien smothers his laughter and looks at her. “Have you aught to say, friend?”

“Well,” she begins, giving Alphinaud a look that makes him take a step back, “I know something of memory loss. Some people surmised it before I myself did. As  _ some people _ know, upon... let us say several occasions as a child, I was shipwrecked, and it was the first such of these incidences that saw the trauma sustained by my body prove too great for my mind to bear. The difference between Yasu Mistrider and Aldera Lightwing was distinct, as Yugiri can well attest to.”

“Our mothers were sisters,” Yugiri explains at Hien’s questioning tilt of the head. Her eyes grow distant with the weight of remembrance. “Yasu was a precocious child—some five years younger than myself, but eager and talkative. As soon as she could walk, she learned to run, and from that point was ever busy in the village of our birth. When I met Aldera in Eorzea, I wondered at the similarities between her scales and tattoos to those of little Yasu’s—but Aldera was silent and patient, and her limbal rings were not green but infused with levin. Though the desire to help others remained.”

“Cousins!” Hien exclaims.

Aldera smiles, a bittersweet thing. “It has been a long time since I have been Yasu, as long as my parents have been departed. But full glad was I to know that I did indeed have kin. But—my past aside. There are certain things that even the finest performance cannot hide. Yotsuyu cultivated ornate sophistication. Every step was calculated. Every movement, every breath, every glance. Only her anger released that tight control over herself—and I see none of that in Tsuyu, who tripped numerous times over easily-avoided rocks on the way here.”

“You think it is a fair bet, then.” He nods, following her line of reasoning. “As it so happens, I am in agreement. But that does little to discount the possibility of her memories returning—yours did, after all.”

“Aye, but only after I was presented the catalyst of Sui-no-Sato. I cannot rightly say if all such losses of memory are the same.”

“Then we will continue to keep watch, and see if we cannot figure out whether her condition is permanent.”

-

“The dislike is mutual,” Aldera bites out, still seething. “And I know a thing or eight about such men by now. A reckoning, he says. If I had a gil for every godsbedamned fool who thought to avenge some master or another through treason, I would be rich, and the Scions would need not worry for their coffers no matter what Alphinaud chose to spend it on—”

“Aldera!” Alphinaud cries.

“—and while it is beyond me what, exactly, he intends, I would be fully prepared for this prisoner exchange to go south. Gods above, the ones who mask it are the most annoying.” Her tirade finished, she huffs and closes her eyes against the burning light of the setting sun.

“You are markedly animated, my friend,” Hien observes. “Not that I do not understand—more the fool it would be to put stock in such a man, even if he appeared to do everything right beforehand. But you express yourself more freely than before.”

She chuckles, mirthless, and shakes her head. “I have had some recent experiences that loosened my tongue, nothing more. Gladly would I have given him a piece of my mind if he had not been so intent on giving me a piece of his.”

“’Nothing more’, she says,” Alisaie says with a pointed stare.

Alphinaud, for once, is joined with her in his disapproval. He turns to Yugiri and Hien. “What our friend is neglecting to tell you is that she disappeared for some moons after the liberation of Ala Mhigo and was very busy indeed in that time. The armor she now bears and the blade she now wields is that of the dark knight—an Ishgardian tradition of combat that makes use of the darkness within to bring justice to one’s enemies. Her recent experiences involved delving into the depths of this art.”

“And I had a minder to keep me from delving too far,” Aldera snips back. “What is this, ‘Tell Tales on Aldera’ Day? Think about who’s keeping your arse out of the frying pan of Tataru’s well-earned rage before you speak overlong, my dearest of friends and longest of allies.”

“When did you take on such a biting edge? Not before the Fray Incident, I should think! It is clear enough that it has changed you,” Alphinaud points out, rallying himself.

Hien snorts. Then he laughs. “The Fray Incident?”

“It may or may not be referred to as such,” Aldera mutters. “Just as Alphinaud may or may not be finding centipedes in his bedding tonight.”

“C-Centipedes?! They are not native to Yanxia—”

Aldera leers at Alphinaud. “Would you like to take bets on that?”

“...You may rest assured that a more open tongue or no, Aldera is still as she ever was,” Alisaie says, turning to Hien and Yugiri with an air of exasperation as her brother and their resident partner in crime descend into bickering. She rolls her eyes. “More prone to this nonsense, but I think that’s for the better. You saw how serious she was before.”

“It does remind me of Yasu,” Yugiri says as she watches her cousin. “Ever easy it was to get a rise out of her. My brothers enjoyed it very much.”

Hien blinks, glancing at her. “...You have brothers?”

“Five, my lord, and all of them irritating.” But she smiles as she says it, her face softening, clearly thinking of them.

“I should like to meet these brothers of yours,” Hien muses. Alisaie tilts her head when Yugiri flushes—a pink so light it would be difficult to tell if one were not watching for it. “Maybe it is them I ought to be thanking for instructing you in the art of concealment, rather than your teachers.”

“Or you could thank me... my lord,” Yugiri says, tart.

He smiles. “That I could, stalwart Yugiri. That I could.”

-

When Tsuyu disappears, Aldera knows there is only one way for things to end.

_ Strike Asahi down where he stands, _ Fray hisses.  _ Damn his status as an emissary. The snake torments the woman with glee. You know! You know! You’ve seen this before! You saw it through her eyes! _

“Aldera?” Alphinaud whispers. She had not realized he had made it to her side. All the better that Asahi is preoccupied with Yotsuyu. “Stay with us.”

She grunts. “It’s the Echo.”

“Really now.”

“All of them snakes,” Aldera mutters under her breath, fuming at what she has seen, at the mummer’s farce before her now. “Would that my steel was needed...”

Alphinaud pinches her.

She glares.

He tilts his head, as if to say  _ do  _ not  _ make a scene, _ and she subsides, though she is no happier for it.

-

Alphinaud is lost in thought after they leave the castrum.

“Alphinaud,” Aldera says. “I take it you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

He hums uneasily.

Alisaie sighs. “You have that look, Brother. What is it?”

“Well...” Alphinaud hedges.

Aldera crosses her arms. “The crates in the castrum.”

“...Yes. Though it can wait until we return,” he says reluctantly. “They gathered them up rather quickly. Returning now to investigate would yield naught, I suspect.”

-

“He spoke of the power to see her vengeance through.” Aldera looks pointedly to Alphinaud and Alisaie. “Where have we heard that before? Upon which occasions?”

Alphinaud goes very quiet, his lips drawn thin in unhappiness, and Alisaie lets out a deep breath from her nose. 

She puts her hand on her hip. “For all of Asahi’s pretty words, my suspicion is near certainty. He would summon a primal of some sort—though which is unknown, since his master used the power remaining in the Eyes of Nidhogg to summon Ilberd’s beast, and I cannot well think of a primal that one aligned with Garlemald would happily summon. It seems likely enough that he intends to use Yotsuyu in the process. Perhaps as a sacrifice.”

“Ugh.” Alisaie has a look of distinct distaste on her face. “It was not enough to mistreat her, was it now...”

-

“You cannot, of course. To do so would burn the bridges we have labored so hard to build—urk—” Asahi’s gloating is cut off as her armored hand clenches around his windpipe and darkness swirls about her.

She tilts her head at how his eyes bug out. “A student of history such as you would know well the tale of the dark knight,” she rumbles, her voice dangerously low. The darkness enhances it, she can tell, makes it reverberate. Makes it bounce through his skull. “Why don’t you tell it to me, Asahi sas Brutus, since you know so much about the world stage?”

“Hhh—gkk—”

“You take me for a fool,” Aldera says. “The Weapon of Light, a musclehead, waiting only to be told where to strike. You loathe me for slaying your precious Zenos. Do you know what your lord did? He killed himself. He stood before me and cut his throat with his own sword, and fell to the ground with his lifeblood spilling out by his own hand. But enough about that—you and I both know your pretense was a mummer’s farce from the first. That your ‘peace’ was going to be void from the first. So let me tell you a different story. A more interesting one.”

It is more Fray talking than her. She’s happy to let him.

Asahi’s eyes are angry and mad. He struggles in her hold. She increases the pressure. Just one small ilm.

“The very first dark knight was a man of honor. He believed in the cause, as well as any Ishgardian. But he cast aside name, title, and honor alike to put an untouchable man to the sword—and every dark knight since has followed in his shadowed footsteps.” Another small tightening, and Asahi chokes, scrabbling at her hold. “Tell me. What makes you think I will not do the same? Am I any less a dark knight for being the Warrior of Light? Peace with Garlemald is not contingent on your hasty appointment as ambassador plenipotentiary. You, Asahi, are expendable.”

And as if to punctuate her point, Yotsuyu’s eyes open, slow and painful, and she raises her hand. Tsukuyomi’s blades spear Asahi through the heart from either side of him. She breathes out with a smile and speaks in a fading voice of vengeance, of her hunger finally being sated, and Aldera lets go of Asahi and steps back, because these final moments belong to the woman most affected by them.

When she is done speaking, the blades cleave Asahi from the inside out, and Yotsuyu has her ponze of flesh. 

The final weight of it.

Aldera approaches her and looks down.

“You seem... troubled,” Yotsuyu says, smiling. “Whatever could be wrong... when the Witch of Doma shall soon be dead?”

“Tsuyu deserved a kinder fate,” Aldera says. She means it. Yotsuyu may not have, but for a brief moment in time, there was Tsuyu, who could have started anew.

Yotsuyu laughs, halting and painful. “Her happiness was never to be... not in this world. Sympathy for your enemy... defending the weak... you really are... a knight in shining armor. For all that darkness... in the end, you’re made of light.”

Who is she to argue with a dying woman? As Yotsuyu breathes her last, thinking of Gosetsu until her end, Aldera watches on. 

It’s the least she can do.

-

“Thal’s gilded... halls. Whatever are you talking about?”

How Thancred always manages to sneak up on her she has no idea.

She jumps when he is suddenly behind her, a perfectly respectable distance away and still altogether so very, very near. He spares her a quick smile, then another for Alisaie and Lyse, before putting a hand on his hip and cocking his head just so— _ ugh, _ she thinks, zoning out as she tries not to stare at him too openly.  _ Damn that pretty face. How dare he, really—pay attention, godsdamnit! _

“...I thought I might look in on you before wending my weary way back to headquarters,” Thancred is saying.

Lyse coughs. “Aldera? Are you alright? You look a tad dazed.”

“Primal Two in as many weeks,” Aldera says, giving her an unappreciative look, tail flicking. “Going those alone is taxing, lest you buy too much into the tales.”

“Those are words that ought not go together in the same sentence,” Alisaie mutters.

She rolls her eyes. _ Really.  _ Now Thancred is scanning her for signs of hidden injury, and he won’t leave her alone until he’s assured that she is fine. “And yet they do, my friend. Let us attend to the task at hand.”

“Right. Was it just me, or did I hear a suggestion that the crown prince might have...  _ gotten better _ from that remarkably fatal injury?” When this is confirmed by four nods, Thancred crosses his arms. “Then I suggest a quick look inside his coffin as the first order of business.”

“Ah, graverobbing,” Aldera says, thinking nostalgically of the time she had chanced to join a few of her fellow pirates on a lucrative business venture deep in the uncharted seas, beyond which lie archipelagoes and histories all with their own complexities, and they had gotten far more than they bargained for, even Caravallain...

Silence surrounds her.

She blinks, breaking from her reverie to realize she is being stared at. “What?”

“Don’t say that like you’ve done it before,” Lyse says, incredulous. “Don’t say it like you liked it, either!”

“...Well, I can tell the truth, or I can lie,” Aldera muses.

Thancred snorts and shakes his head. “How about you do neither? Plausible deniability is always best, I say.”

“Oh, good thinking.” She nods. “I can neither confirm nor deny my potential past experience with something I may or may not have done.”

“And here we go again,” Alisaie mutters to Lyse as Aldera and Thancred walk on ahead of them, already well into a conversation.

Lyse snickers. “Tell me about it. Hey, who’s in the lead right now?”

“For the betting pool? Last Tataru checked... mm...” Alisaie gives it a moment of thought. “I think it was Y’shtola. They will not tell us until one of them experiences some threat to their life or another, and the other abandons all reason to save them. She’s got a scarily keen eye for matters of the heart, but the problem is proof. You know how those two are.”

Lyse looks to where Aldera is trying to step on Thancred’s foot and keep walking at the same time. She takes in the close brush of their shoulders, the swagger to Thancred’s step, the way Aldera pauses in her efforts and looks at him with wide eyes when he throws back his head and laughs.

“Do I ever,” she deadpans. “All we’re missing is the life-threatening situation.”

“Lucky us. We seem to have a collective talent for attracting such things,” Alisaie snarks, sparking laughter from Lyse, who carefully does not wonder at the warmth in her own chest when Alisaie smiles.

-

Before Thancred leaves to cross the border from Ala Mhigo, he comes to her room in the Rising Stones.

“You’re going tomorrow, then?” Aldera asks. She slips a bookmark into her tome on advanced arcanima and looks up at him from her bed. He takes a seat on her chair, looping his arms over its back, and nods. “Be careful, then. I know you know... but, well, all the Garleans I’m friends with happen to be exiles. It would be difficult to bail you out.”

Thancred smiles, though it feels somber. “And yet I have the feeling that somehow, you’d manage it.”

“I would have to enlist the aid of Cid and the  _ Excelsior,  _ and then he’d never let me hear the end of it. So try not to get caught... for my sake.” Her eyes crinkle at the corners in her familiar ghost of a smile.

He sighs. Why he is so melancholy escapes him—there is the usual desire for the companionship of his friends tempered by the advance knowledge that he will be absent from them for some time, and there are the usual apprehensions about infiltration both on his part and that of others, but the mood that has taken him sits some degrees past what that combination of factors generally instills in him. Still, he meets her quiet gaze and says, “As you wish, then.”

“Was there aught else that brought you to my door?” she asks, perching on the edge of her bed with her tome on her lap. Her eyes search his face for signs of trouble. The simple fact of her concern warms him.

She is dressed down in a simple oversized tunic with a square neck and a pair of dark sleep shorts that peek out from beneath the tunic’s folds at about her mid-thigh. Likely she’s planning to spend a late night studying, if he knows her.

And he does. He does know Aldera.

Thancred weighs his options, leaning forward on the chair and letting his arms hang loosely over it. Aldera stifles an amused noise—not terribly well—and waits.

“My feet simply led me here,” he decides on saying, finally, and lets her take that as she will. “But should you wish to be disturbed no further, I will take my leave.”

She reaches out and swings one of his limp hands. He smiles, secure in the knowledge that his hair will conceal it—until her hand reaches out to part his bangs so she can look him in the eye. “No, stay as long as you wish. I cannot promise that I am a great deal of fun at the moment, since I have finally wheedled this tome on loan from Urianger’s prized collection, but you _ are _ welcome, you know.”

“Aldera...”

Her gaze softens. She waves his concern off, moving to sit back against the wall of her alcove bed. “You will be gone for some time. Relax as you will.”

“Very well,” he declares. He stands, rounds the chair, and carefully flops on the far end of her bed back-first, landing on her feet.

Aldera makes a wheezing noise and points her toes upward, digging into the flesh of his back, but he does not budge, instead choosing to remain stubbornly inert. Half-laughing, she leans forward to gently pound her fist on his chest. “Thancred, what in Nymeia’s name are you doing?”

“Relaxing,” he tells her. He reaches up and plucks a book at random from her personal shelf, opening it to the first page. A romance novel, he notes, privately surprised—she didn’t seem the type, and he certainly hasn’t seen any among her personal effects while on the road, or in her apartment at the Topmast. “See?”

But her face has flushed. She quite forgets the arcanima tome, which slips off her lap and onto the floor as she lunges forward for the novel. Thancred keeps it out of her grip with ease. She ends up half on top of him, with him pinning one arm to her back and keeping one leg trapped between his, and his superior reach enabling him to dangle it just out of her grasp. “Not that one!  _ Thancred!” _

“You’re awfully animated, darling,” he notes, half-conscious of the way his voice has dropped to a lower timber as he looks at her with his eyes half-open and gives her a smug smile. “Why not this one? Is it...  _ scandalous?” _

_ “No!  _ Put it back—” she whines as he tips his head up and maneuvers the book until he can close it in order to look at the cover. Her forehead hits his clavicle. “Nooo...”

_ “The Phantom Rogue,”  _ he reads, brows arching upward as he takes the cover in: a mousy-looking Miqo’te in a rather revealing outfit that he thinks is meant to resemble that of an inspector’s is swooning against—his smile grows—a young Hyuran man with silver hair in an equally revealing archetypal thief’s outfit, pulling the Miqo’te close with a strong arm around her middle. The author is one Mme. Jalleour—a pseudonym if he’s ever seen one, but a pseudonym he happens to know is credited with authoring some of the raunchiest romance novels in Eorzea.

In fact, if memory serves, this particular novel is home to some rather distracting scenes. Was this one the one to have the moonlit kiss or the underwater makeout to sustain air as the inspector and rogue both hid from Ul’dahn agents...?

Aldera makes another futile grab for the book without raising her head. “Thancred...”

“Why, I didn’t know you had it in you,” he teases, depositing the book on the top of the shelf in order to tilt her chin up with his newly freed hand. “Anything I should know, lovely?”

“I think you already know,” she grumps at him.

He laughs. “Maybe I do. ‘Twas not all that long ago that I had you up against a wall in the Ala Mhigan Quarter, muffling your cries with my lips as I took you again and again, and to my recall you quite enjoyed it—”

“It is a miracle we haven’t been discovered yet,” Aldera mutters, her face a deep blue. “You are an absolutely incorrigible man.”

He turns and noses at her jaw with a smirk. “I’m not hearing any denial.”

“That’d be because there wasn’t any.”

“Well then. What would you say to a reprisal, darling?”

She hums. “You might could convince me...”

“Then I shall employ my silver tongue to the best of my ability,” he says, smiling, and draws her in for a kiss.

-

“Just a moment, Aldera, if you please,” Thancred says. He waves Alisaie off. “Go on. This shall take but a moment. Promise.”

Alisaie raises two unconvinced brows, but she turns and strides in the direction of the aetheryte anyways, her concern for Alphinaud likely blotting out all else at the moment. Thancred takes Aldera by the wrist, pulling her into the nearby alley, and she blinks up at him with round eyes.

“What was it—” she starts. 

He pushes her against the wall and kisses her, hot and passionate and full. She moans into his mouth, caught off guard, and he rumbles in wordless response, taking the liberty of pressing his tongue into her mouth and swiping over every place he can reach, taking a moment to linger before tilting her head for a new angle—one which sends frissions of pleasure sparking up from the point of contact, causing her to jolt several times as he relentlessly explores her with tongue and teeth, his hands gripping her arse to hoist her up as she locks her legs around his waist. 

Aldera can only hang on and happily let him have his way; when eventually he pulls back for breath, his chest heaving, he leans his forehead against hers and smiles. “Needed that, too.”

“I see your hands are still on my arse,” Aldera laughs, breathless.

Thancred squeezes, making her squeak. “That they are, darling. Any objections?”

“Positively none, but it wasn’t very fair of you to start this when I have to leave so soon,” she tells him.

He kisses her again. And again and again and again—

“I’ll make it up to you upon your return,” he promises her, pulling away and setting her down, his body sorely missing the tight contact already. With a friendly swat to her arse he steps back. “That was all—though if you do stay, I do not know that I can be counted upon to behave, as you so often wish me to. Bring Alphinaud back, would you?”

Aldera smiles up at him, her aetheric gaze soft and melting. “Of course I shall. By your leave, then.”

All of a few seconds see her conjure up a teleportation spell that will take her yalms and yalms away from here. He smiles for her until she goes, and when her aether swallows her up, he leans against the wall with a low groan. 

Gods. The sight of her, the scent of her—after infiltrating the Imperial provinces yet again, he could have spent days happily lavishing her with his affections. He has half a mind to just as soon as she returns, damn the rest of the world, but then they are keeping this to themselves until such a time as there is no real reason to hide it any longer. No, he’ll have to wait for the right moment to spirit her away, perhaps to some deserted location unfrequented by even adventurers, or mayhaps to Costa del Sol again...

But such thoughts can wait until later. He has work to do now that he has had a moment to catch his breath, and Aldera and Alisaie are counting on him to see it done properly.

-

“How long has it been since you and I were on the road together, Y’shtola?” Aldera asks, delighted, and holds her hand out when Y’shtola opens her mouth to point out that they just  _ were  _ on the road together. “No, no, ‘tis far from the same thing! Remember when we last made camp together. How long ago was that? Was it Titan?”

Y’shtola crosses her arms and gives her a dry look. “You sound more and more like Thancred by the day. Is there aught we ought to know?”

“Oh, this Thancred again,” Hien says cheerfully. “I’ve heard an awful lot about him.”

“Have you now,” Y’shtola muses, and Aldera looks between their sudden conspiratorial glances with growing trepidation.

She clears her throat. “Well, we should be getting on. I can scout ahead...”

“I am most curious, Lord Hien. Pray tell what you have heard of our resident rogue,” Y’shtola says with a firm grip on Aldera’s shoulder.

Hien’s got that shite-eating grin again. Aldera resigns herself to hours of this. “Much and more, let me tell you...”

-

“Strange that a child of Sui-no-Sato should be the one to win the Nadaam,” Sadu says with a smirk. 

Aldera sighs. “I have not been a child of Sui-no-Sato since I was a child. Is it not stranger that an Eorzean should do so?”

“Ha. Maybe so, khagan. Ready yourself—I shall see you on the field of battle.”

-

“Little sun,” Aldera repeats, and starts laughing again, sounding  _ remarkably  _ like Sadu as she does. “Little sun! Little sun!”

Y’shtola regards her with an indulgent smile. “Brought you much amusement, have I?”

“I loathe that pompous little shite,” is the cheerful response.

Hien shakes his head, though he’s smiling too. “No matter how many times I hear it out of you, a part of me continues to be shocked when you express yourself, my friend.”

“I have had enough of the madness that is my existence and have decided to respond appropriately.” Aldera strides ahead with a jaunty, gleeful step, heedless of the clanking of her heavy armor. “Ah, Y’shtola, I could run the length of the Steppe with the verve that gave me!”

“I do not accept the propositions of coworkers either, before you start,” Y’shtola deadpans, and they have to stop by the road and wait for Aldera to finish giggling.

\- 

She is at his side without thought—the instant he starts to fall she vaults over the table to catch him, and only barely manages to do so before his head makes a nasty collision with the floor.

Aldera feels cold.

That’s about all she can muster as she lifts Thancred’s unconscious form into her arms, looking down at his closed eyes and not feeling very comforted at all that he still has a pulse. She can feel her friends’ eyes on her, as well as those of the Alliance leaders, but gods above—not again.

_ Not again,  _ she thinks, although Thancred still breathes, and his heart is still working.

“...For fuck’s sake,” she says presently. Her voice breaks. “I am so _ tired  _ of this nonsense.”

_ Weakness—godsdamn you,  _ Fray hisses.  _ You cannot be weak to them. You are the Weapon of Light— _

Someone murmurs her name. Aymeric, she thinks. Aymeric who watched her lose Haurchefant too.

Her chest is as ice.

_ Not again. Not again. Not again. _

Y’shtola takes a step forward and kneels at her side. Her hands are warm when they wrap around the one she has curled over Thancred’s heart. “As am I, but you must allow another to bear Thancred to a room for examination, and swiftly. I cannot see you fancying a second go of being flattened by his weight.”

“Right. Right. Yes. Yes, of course,” Aldera murmurs. But she doesn’t move.

Y’shtola sighs. “You are needed here, Aldera. I will go with him and see to him personally. Does that suffice?”

Aldera looks up, into Y’shtola’s eyes, and sees understanding there—and beneath it Y’shtola’s own worry. “Thank you, Shtola,” she whispers.

Her eyes widen, and then she smiles. Brief, momentary, laced with sorrow. “Of course.”

-

“The same look in her eyes,” Aymeric muses long after the Scions and Kan-E-Senna leave the room, and all present look to him. There is pain in his face and his eyes, which are, for the moment, far off. “Fate is cruel to heap such anguish upon her twice.”

“Twice?” Hien asks.

Aymeric blinks. “...Ah, yes, it makes sense that you would not know the tale. When Aldera was in pursuit of an end to the Dragonsong of Ishgard, there was an occasion upon which we had need to pursue the archbishop—her, myself, and a few companions. We almost had him. A knight of the Heaven’s Ward, however, took aim at Aldera...” He closes his eyes. “One of our companions—a very dear friend to me—shielded her, but the shield broke. Haurchefant and Aldera were dear to each other. I held him as they said their goodbyes. And I did not see light in her eyes nor a smile on her face until Master Thancred’s return.”

“I had no idea. Though I suppose—” Hien breaks off, his brows creasing in thought. “She did say it was a knight whose example inspired her to do as she does. ‘To help those in need—for those we have lost, and for those we can yet save.’”

It brings a half-smile to Aymeric’s face. “Yes. Those first words were the words of one Haurchefant Greystone, a loyal and honorable son of Ishgard.”

“His memory lives on, and in the heart of the one best suited to carry it. I would not presume to tell you to be at peace, Ser Aymeric, but perhaps that can be of some comfort to you,” says Raubahn, arms crossed.

-

“...That which you experienced was, I believe, your soul being plucked from your flesh. Called.”

It passes by her. Aldera feels as if she is dreaming. Surely she will wake soon.

Kan-E-Senna’s voice catches her attention. “I could not sense the spark of life that is his soul.”

If she had felt cold before, it is nothing compared to the emptiness that floods her now. Could not sense it. Could not  _ sense  _ it? It _ is  _ happening again—Haurchefant’s smile, his lifeblood spilling from his mouth as he coughed, the dissipation of his aether as his soul departed his body—

“That Thancred alone was stricken so is likely due to his heightened sensitivity to the effects of aether,” Kan-E-Senna is saying. “It is a consequence of his prior possession by the Ascian Lahabrea.”

“I was regulating it. He had migraines. Regulating the flow of ambient aether helped him. I thought—it could be repaired,” Aldera whispers. 

Kan-E-Senna looks at her for a long, silent, and altogether too sympathetic moment before shaking her head. “In time, perhaps. But healing such damage is a lifelong process. There was nothing you could have done to stem the flow of this tide, I do not think, for the power I sensed was... momentous. Whoever awaits you beyond that call has a power unlike any I have ever known.”

“Whoever awaits us is going to, at the very least, feel the weight of my fist.” Aldera crosses her arms.

Alisaie sighs. “I understand, trust me, I do, but going in swinging—”

“Allow me this indulgence,” she says, closing her eyes. “Long does my fury simmer. It need not be upon our initial meeting... but it damn well might be.”

-

She loses them one by one, as she did before, and it makes her want to scream as much as it does Alisaie.

“This will not end until this bastard gets me,” Aldera says to Alisaie as they make their way to the aetheryte in Mor Dhona. “You know it, I know it—why in all the seven hells is it them? I am the one that is wanted—”

“Maybe he’s bad at his job,” Alisaie says, her voice still bearing that ragged edge of emotion.

Aldera closes her eyes. Draws herself back in. “...I am sorry, Alisaie. I... I know we are both frustrated.”

“It’s alright.” And it is. For a tenuous moment.

-

“Godsdamnit,” Aldera screams through the pain as the bastard voice torments the two of them again. “If you can hear me— _ I am going to punch you!” _

Raubahn’s hand, heavy on her shoulder. “Aldera.”

“I am about ready to give whoever is doing this to us a taste of my steel,” she snarls in enraged pain.

“Hold steady,” Raubahn says. “Hold fast. You may yet get your chance.”

-

“Gaius van Baelsar. Or just Gaius. Holy shit, you have a face?”

Alisaie puts her head in her hands. Hien snorts despite himself.

Aldera waves the broken mask at Gaius, who looks at her with the face of one who does not understand in the least how to respond. “I thought this was your face. My bad.”

“...You are significantly more lacking in gravitas than when we first met, I will admit,” Gaius says. He looks askance at the blade at her side. “And now I see why. You took up the armor of the dark knight, did you?”

“Even you? It must be bad.” Aldera sighs, shaking her head. “I am changed from what I once was. I have also seen far more. Let us not dwell on me, and rather on the issue at hand... and before you ask, no, I do not care to fight you again as an enemy. You kept Alphinaud safe. That is meet enough for me as well.”

Gaius turns to look at the horizon again after a long, inscrutable moment in which he stares at her with no expression on his face. “I take it back. Not that changed. Very well, then. I shall continue the partnership the boy began, and share with you what intelligence I have gathered...”

-

It seems clear enough that Varis is not at the parley to listen. Not that she expected it from such a man, but the condescension in his gait and his voice is a trait he shares with Zenos. The Garlean arrogance, as she thought of it when first facing the crown prince in battle. 

Aldera watches with narrowed eyes as he deconstructs the arguments of each of the Alliance leaders without acknowledging the sophistry of his own.

_ What fine sport Alphinaud would make of this, _ she thinks.  _ It was the VIIth Legion who spurred Bahamut’s summoning. Nael van Darnus who saw Dalamud called down. Midas nan Garlond who oversaw the Meteor Project. As if Garlemald bears no responsibility? As if he himself does not? What a farce this is, just as much as Asahi’s supposed bid for peace. _

When they break for a recess she finds herself in the company of Aymeric and Hien. Aymeric shakes his head. “I must admit he is certainly skilled at keeping his opponents off-balance.”

“He did not listen,” Aldera says, one hand on her hip. “to a word anyone except Alisaie said. He has some other aim—it is for us to figure out what that is before it costs us lives. A viper’s nest indeed.”

Hien nods. Aymeric considers.

The harsh lights above flicker. The minutes wind on.

-

_ Of the Source and its thirteen reflections. _

She feels the cold again inside. Varis is not wrong when he says there is a more fundamental problem to be solved ere true peace can be had—but how casually he proposes the Rejoining. As if the lives of mankind, which he claims to care for so much, matter not at all.

And quite abruptly, Aldera has had enough.

“Your prize is a lie,” she says, arms crossed, and all present look to her. “Your masters, demons. You look upon all else and think yourself enlightened when it was the hand of shadow that built all you know? Where do you see Garlemald in this rejoined world of yours—as its rightful ruler? If you parley with the Ascians you know their workings. Your aims might resemble theirs, but just like the people of Ala Mhigo found with your very own Empire... you will never be free. No perfect world proposed by such beings would be perfect for any but them.”

“I come to _ liberate,”  _ Varis hisses, standing. “To free man from the prison of divergence. Imagine a world united—one perfect race beneath a single standard. An army before whose might these servants of Darkness and Light would fly as leaves in a storm, never again to meddle in man’s affairs. We would reclaim man’s destiny!”

“I am imagining it and I am seeing discord in its ranks.” Aldera stays perfectly still as the man towers over her. Gods, but she is sick of this. “You idealize this perfect world and perfect dream and you are doing nothing to indicate that you might have thought of the enemy’s reprisal upon learning of such a plan. Remember whence your knowledge came, Your Radiance. And think on what is being left out. By the Ascians and by you. I cannot imagine you foolish enough not to be aware of the cost of each Calamity in lives... that of those on our star, and those of others.”

Talks quickly wend southward after that. What Varis wants is no less than annihilation for the sake of a distant and malformed dream.

By the time they are back at camp, Aldera’s thoughts have wandered back to Hydaelyn.

_ Is this what you want of me? _ she muses, still no more assured.  _ Still—to fight for the peace of this star. Varis called it hypocrisy and then proceeded to spew forth a truly impressive pack of lies, all the more jaw-dropping for how like they are to be standing on a seed of truth, though the form of that seed must be very different indeed... _

_ I chose this path long ago. I do not always appreciate the fighting. To be embroiled in conflict upon conflict, led by the resounding of the Echo to help those in need, pulls apart the core of me until I question where I end and all else begins. But I cannot find my answer in the event of the Rejoining, nor can anyone else on this star. _

_ So I fight. And I suppose my reasons could be seen as a form of love. Devotion, even. _

_ Haurchefant, watch over the others. They shall need it more than I. _

-

Hien and Yugiri are both holding her. One shoulder per. Alisaie sleeps, and she fears for her friend.

“I am fine,” Aldera says. “Just... fine.”

Yugiri shakes her head. “We will get Alisaie back to the encampment with all due haste, Aldera.”

“I know. Just—don’t ask me how I feel. Because you know what the answer is.”

Hien sighs. “I am sorry, my friend.”

-

A  _ break. _ To  _ rest. _

Fray flickers and falters and surges forward, seething at the directive, but it’s not as if she can do anything else. She has more pride than to while away her bells making a nuisance of herself in the infirmary. While she waits, she returns to Ishgard, and takes her rest in Fortemps Manor.

Aymeric shows up within a day of her being there—no doubt Lord Edmont let it slip. She is tending to her blade and her armor when he enters the sitting room she has claimed for her own purposes; Emmanellain, briefly home from Camp Dragonhead, is keeping her company (for a given measure of “company”, anyways) and doing his level best to distract her with the latest gossip. All three of them—Aldera, Emmanellain, and Honoroit—look up at Aymeric’s entrance. He surveys them with a smile. “Greetings, my friends. I see we have a busy establishment ongoing here.”

“Honoroit wanted to see how I repair armor,” Aldera says by way of explanation. “Emmanellain has... a new hobby, shall we say.”

The youngest son of House Fortemps puts his head in his hands. “Old girl, why did you have to phrase it thus? I am merely interested in the blade—the art of it, the form! So—”

Honoroit smiles at Aymeric. “He’s cluttering his room with rusty old blades, milord.”

“I can well believe that,” Aymeric replies, taking a seat on the ground next to Emmanellain and across from Aldera. His smile is teasing as he pats Emmanellain on the shoulder. Aldera wishes, for just one tiny moment, that it could have been him she loved beyond measure. “But, young Honoroit, I do suspect you will get more use out of seeing Aldera tend to her weaponry if that is the case. What has sparked your interest in the intricacies of armor?”

“Now that I can answer—” Emmanellain starts.

Honoroit flushes. “Pray pay my lord no mind, Ser Aymeric, as what he witnessed was a misunderstanding. On his part. To give you a proper answer—I had occasion to visit the Manufactory while placing a supply order for the Ironworks, and Lord Stephanivien de Haillenarte was kind enough to allow me to watch his students at work while I waited upon the proper forms needed to fulfill my task. It was truly fascinating! I have no wish to take up more of his time, and Lady Lightwing was already cleaning her armor, so it is meet, I suppose you could say.”

“You are a good student,” Aldera comments, her attention already back on her work, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Honoroit flush.

“M-m-my thanks, milady,” is the sheepish, stammered response, and eager to move on—perhaps to avoid Emmanellain’s smirk—the boy points to the abrasive she has at hand. “What qualities does this bear that you would employ it in tending to Ironworks-made armor?”

-

Aymeric stays into the evening. After dinner he draws her aside, and they stand out on the balcony of what was once Haurchefant’s room, watching the stars in silence. Often did she spend the times she was landed with night duty as a child finding some nook or cranny in the ship to stare up at those distant, forbidding pinpricks of light, and she feels now as she did when she was a little girl, then a young lass, and then a teenager—a queer and preeminent melancholy with no clear beginning or end, only a constancy from which there was no escape.

She had not known what to call it when she was young. Now she does.

But such things are not for the Warrior of Light to voice.

Perhaps she sighs, for Aymeric glances at her, his face softening with concern and sympathy. “Aldera...”

“After Haurchefant died,” she says, suddenly, “Estinien let me fight him until I could fight no more. He did not speak his sympathy. I found myself able to bear that far more than kindness, though I do not know why. After the liberation of Ala Mhigo I sought him out—I had stumbled over the path of the dark knight, and I knew of none better to keep an eye on me, given what he endured and how he overcame it. The Scions, they were... less than pleased. I was essentially under supervision for moons afterward. Now they are all—lost to me. It is... it is a contrast.”

“You feel bereft,” Aymeric supplies.

Aldera nods, her hands clenching on the railing. “All and sundry ask me how I am faring when it is plain enough to see. I wish they would stop.”

“Hmm.” He watches her, she can see it out of the side of her eye, one hand going to support his elbow while the other cradles his chin in thought. “...Perhaps I can provide you some insight, simple though this is going to seem. They who ask such of you care for you, Aldera.”

She stares at the moon. She cannot help the way her mouth thins into a line.

“It is difficult to countenance. I myself was never at ease with it—not until Lucia, Estinien, and Haurchefant became my steadfast allies and remained so in the face of all things. And I imagine with your position, and your legend only growing over time, it is a fair sight more difficult to navigate the differences between actions, words, and beliefs. But there are those I would argue you may trust to mean what they say—Commander Hext, for one, and I daresay Lady Yugiri and Lord Hien as well. All three are steadfast, honest, and honorable.”

“But what do I say?” Aldera knows her face is twisting with her displeasure. “What do they say? The battlefield does not ask such things of me.”

Aymeric is looking at her with surprise, as if he did not expect to hear that from her. “...Life is not  _ only  _ battle, Aldera.”

“I... I know. I know.” Abashed, she looks down at her hands.

“I understand why Commander Aldynn was at pains to ensure you got some proper measure of rest now,” he muses. “To be on edge given your circumstances is eminently understandable. Even the best soldier, however, can ill withstand a prolonged period of high alertness. You yourself told Master Alphinaud as much on our trip to parley with Hraesvelgr, did you not? ‘The golden rule of a life such as ours is to sleep when you can.’”

Aldera looks away. “...I did not have virtuous motives for telling him as much.”

He laughs. “I could tell. Luckily for you, he was less experienced then, and he did not realize that you wanted him to be silent. But you still spoke true, my friend. None of us can go without sleep or sustenance. And none of us can fight endlessly. But rest need not mean staying in one place—not for you, my wandering friend, just as it is not for Estinien. Mayhaps you would benefit from a small journey of your own, one removed from the fate of the realm. There is time. And there is space.”

“Perhaps so,” she agrees, some of the unease in her ebbing away as she considers his words. They are silent for a time until she speaks up again. “Thank you. I... I think I will. A journey of reflection seems—appropriate.”

“Full glad am I to have been of help,” Aymeric tells her with a warm smile.

-

No one else is taken. The voice is silent, for a time.

Aldera journeys. As she did before the Scions, she travels alone, though she spends some time demarcating each waypoint of her path via linkpearl for Hoary’s sake, should news come and she still be on the road. None does, and she does not know whether she likes that or not. There is no change in the Archons’ conditions, nor that of the twins. She grows quiet again.

Without them, it is all too easy to fall back into old habits.

She takes to wearing a helm—it is easier, more efficient, less messy. Less blood and grime in her hair and on her horns. After a few moons, she realizes that it has quickly become her shield, and that part of her cannot stand to be seen. Although she makes a point of visiting Ishgard, where some part of her knows she is known, she never stays for long, and rarely sees more than Lord Edmont, who, to his credit, makes every effort to care for his honorary daughter.

It never rains in Mor Dhona. The day she returns to the Rising Stones to check up on everyone she finds that the sky is cloaked in aetheric discharge, but a weaker sort than she has seen before, like a thin film on the fabric of the air rather than the thick fog she is used to.

Maxima invites her to come with him to see her acquaintance, and she cannot leave soon enough.

And it is Cid—of course it is. 

“It sounds like you’ve been through the mill,” he says, embracing her. She feels the burn of tears in her eyes as she returns it, careful to keep the spikes of her armor from his doublet. “You should have called me. Though I confess tracking down souls isn’t exactly within my field of expertise.”

Aldera steps back with a watery laugh and looks down at her feet. The helmet conceals her expression from them, though she has a feeling Cid knows, as he always does, what it is she truly feels. “My apologies. I was—I made a... pilgrimage, of sorts.”

“Heard about that. Did you find in it what you hoped to find?”

She shrugs. “It kept me busy, at the least.”

“You never have taken well to stillness,” Cid acknowledges with a smile, and they end up talking for a long bell with Maxima—until she hears what she has been waiting for since the moment Alisaie fell to the ground.

Footsteps, rapid, with the clanking of armor. She half-turns and sees an Alliance messenger.

The gears of fate grind into motion once again.

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

“I am going to punch you,” Aldera says, chillingly calm. “Leave what you will for me. I will do your task, whatever it is. But your bungled efforts have borne those dearest to me away without warning or any sign of of cure, and I am  _ unhappy. _ I am in the middle of a battle. I do not like you.”

The stranger seems taken aback for a moment. Then he sighs, weary, and his grip on his staff tightens. “...I was warned you would feel as much. Far be it from me to deny you such. I pray you will allow me to explain, however, whence you arrive...”

“Then pray.” Aldera bares her teeth at him in a mockery of a smile.

The world dissolves into white.

-

_ Do not look at me so... _

_ You could be free... _

_ We did everything right... _

Aldera watches: her past, her memories, all of it engraved on her soul, flying past her seemingly without aim and yet managing not to hit her. 

_ Where is this taking me? _ she wonders. Frowns as the thought echoes back at her.  _ Somewhere interesting, I suppose. _

The journey, wherever its destination, is long. Long enough that she begins to grow bored. Crossing her arms, she spins and watches the past fall away, and as she does she hums.

_ What do you do with a drunken sailor, what d’you do with a drunken sailor... _

-

“Start talking,” Aldera says, crossing her arms.

The stranger—a lord, it seems, of some sort—pauses. “You would not prefer to... well...”

“The time and place shall be of my choosing, and you shall not be privy to when,” she shoots back. “I shall listen to your words. I can see well enough that this Light is not meant to be as it is. That... sin eater, was it, ate a merchant I saw on the road here—I recognized that ring. Not even voidsent in the depths of the sea look as that creature did. Is it a manifestation of this blinding Light?”

He seems relieved. “You are as clever as your friends described you to be. But pray let me begin at a simpler place than that, as you shall have need of all the facts. This is one of the thirteen reflections of the Source—the First...”

-

As she wanders the Crystarium loosely according to the Crystal Exarch’s directions, her fool heart becomes endeared to what she sees—a city rooted in defiance, built to stand against the encroaching Light, built on the hopes and dreams of those who survived a cataclysm. Damn the man. Somehow he knew it would be this that mollified her and bid her listen further to his tale: the hearts of the people, the brilliant spark in their eyes.

Everywhere she goes, the Crystal Tower is visible. She has not forgotten the Ironworks symbol on the beacon.

Nor has she forgotten what happened within the Tower, all those years ago, before the banquet in Ul’dah.

It is with this growing suspicion in her heart that she returns to the Crystal Exarch as she is bid. He seems to know nothing of G’raha when she tests him... but that does not put the question out of possibility. It would depend on the era, of course, just as it would depend upon whether G’raha himself even remains G’raha—how many has she encountered over the years who were changed, body and form, by the weight of the years or the loss of memory? The shift in the Exarch’s gait, however, tells her not to inquire overmuch.

Yet.

Aldera tucks the thought away in the back of her mind and follows him into the Tower.

-

“...Their arrival, however, was not as recent as you may imagine. Here, time flows at a different pace from that of the Source.”

The chill is back. Aldera knows she has gone rigid, even her tail stilling, as she stares at the Exarch with her heart in her mouth. “How long.”

“It is not so simple as a measurable difference,” he warns her. “It fluctuates without rhyme or reason, and it cannot be predicted.”

_ “How long,”  _ Aldera repeats, her voice low and ragged.

The Exarch pauses for a long moment. 

_ “Tell  _ me!” she shouts. “How long have they been here?”

“Thancred has dwelt here for five years,” the Exarch says, slow, “while Y’shtola and Urianger have been here for three. Our most ‘recent’ arrivals—Alphinaud and Alisaie—have lived in the First for almost a year.”

Five years. 

Five years. Five  _ years. _ Two alone before they came to him. Five moons past he fell—

Aldera’s legs fail her. The Exarch exclaims in wordless surprise as she collapses to the floor, and while he rushes to support her, he stops short of touching her, perhaps sensing that such would not be welcome coming from him. She stares at the steps. “Five years.”

He had been—what, thirty-two, thirty-three? Add five to that—it would make thirty-eight.

Five years. 

So much can change in five years.

“I know it must be a shock,” the Exarch is saying, kneeling a careful distance away from her. “I had intended to summon only you. But the art of reaching across worlds—”

“You bungled the job. As I said before,” she bites out.

He winces. “Yes. I did do that. Thus it was that my fumbling hand closed upon those to whom your fate is most closely bound as well.”

She does not respond.

“...As they were not the object of my summons, their transference was incomplete. Though they may appear to possess corporeal bodies, they are, in truth, merely spirits one can see and touch.”

She closes her eyes.

“Much as it grieves me, they are stranded here... unable to return.”

Aldera lunges to her feet and punches him squarely in the jaw. “You bastard,” she seethes, a torrent of rage long stoppered unbottling itself and flowing through her. “You  _ bastard!” _

“I understand. I do,” says the Exarch, his hood miraculously unruffled by her forcible violence. He does cradle his jaw, and that makes her feel just a little bit better. “But you must know why I did not find a way to send them back. We tried at first—but when Urianger came, he shared a vision he had seen on his passage over. A vision of the future. One where the First was rejoined to the Source, and in so doing brought about the Eighth Umbral Calamity...”

Her breathing is harsh and ragged as she struggles to control herself, listening to him talk of the future. Of what lies ahead.

And though her affinity of the Echo only shows her the past and that which has not been, something in her rings with the truth of it.

The Exarch looks at her again as he says: “Urianger watched you die.”

Aldera breathes. Only breathes. She daren’t do anything else.

“Their souls may be stranded here—but they have fought on. They are desperate to save their home—and you—from destruction.”

“Okay,” Aldera says. Closes her eyes again. “Okay. What would you have me do?”

“...You would be willing to believe my tale, just like that?”

Her eyes snap open to glare at him. “Unfortunately for you, yes. I know well enough not to call myself the Warrior of Light here after walking through the city, but that is what I am, and since you know of it, you know what it is that I do. Your words thus far are proof enough of that. Now  _ what. Would. You. Have. Me. Do.” _

The Exarch is yet another man who does not know what to do with her. He stares at her, and she has a feeling if he did not bear the weight of years about him, his jaw might be hanging open. 

“Fight? Solve problems? Some matter of aetheric attunement?”

“A-as it happens, no,” he stammers, regaining himself. “I thought you might prefer to seek out your comrades first, and hear the tale from their lips ere you make a decision of any sort on where you stand...”

“Well. Someone has told you much of me.” She exhales through her nose. Control.

He shakes his head. “Not just someones—many someones. Each and every one of your friends contributed their knowledge, in hopes of making the summoning a success.”

“Then you are not the only one I am going to have words with.”

“Oh dear.” The Exarch smiles. “I can wish them only the best of luck, if this has been any indication.”

“I still don’t like you,” she warns.

He inclines his head. “I understand. So long as you are willing to trust me for now.”

-

“I know you,” Aldera says, staring at him. Of course she knows him. She saw his life—just as he saw hers. “Ardbert. Warrior of Darkness.”

“What—did you just—you—” Ardbert stammers. He points at her. “You can hear me?!”

“Yes, I...”

But he isn’t listening. In fact, he almost looks near tears. “Oh, gods, how long has it been...”

“Oh—” She hates it when they cry. She reaches out, but stops short of touching him. “Settle down, now—”

“You know my name, though,” he says suddenly, looking down at her. The question is already in his eyes:  _ how? _

Aldera blinks, her hand still outstretched. “Um... the Echo?”

“That’s not how it—well, no, I suppose it must be for you—gah.” He smacks his forehead. “...’pologies. I have not spoken to anyone in... years. Many, many years. Your name. What is it?”

“...Believe it or not, that is the nicest way I have been asked that question in some time. My name is Aldera Lightwing.”

“Aldera,” he says, testing it out. “...Aldera. Aye. It fits. You remember my tale, then—?”

“I am a scholar.” She spares him a smile. “Of summoning first and foremost, but remembering such tales is part of my duty. Yes, I remember you. What happened to you after Minfilia left to subdue the Flood?”

He looks down again. Tears—there’s tears forming—she daren’t try and touch him, as he is, what if her hand goes right through him and he does cry? “Minfilia and my friends gave what little they had left to stem the tide. I watched on, but I did not go with them. She told me... she told me my time had not yet come. But how long has it been... do you know? How many years has it been since we brought the Flood?”

“A hundred years,” Aldera says. She understands the Exarch’s prior hesitation, but she does not share it—nor, she suspects, does Ardbert. “I am sorry.”

“One hundred long years.” Ardbert screws his eyes shut as he turns away from her.

Belatedly, she lets her hand fall back to her side. “Pardon my asking, but... though I can sense you, it’s dim. You are not living. Are you.”

In silent answer he makes his way to the table and tries to pick up the cup that has been set upon it. His hand curls into a fist after it goes straight through the cup. “...No. I am not.”

“I am sorry,” she repeats, and falls quiet.

“A shade, cursed to do naught but wander...” Ardbert muses, and she watches as he does, and thus it is that she sees when the gears of his mind begin to move. His posture shifts, tenses, and she sees in him a flash of the Warrior who so desperately pursued her death. “I have been walking for what feels like forever. A day and an age. I barely noticed when my mind and body began to fray at the edges—until my senses snapped back into focus, and I was pulled. Pulled here. To this room, and to you. Why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine—”

He spins to face her. “Why is it that you can see me? What are you even doing here, come to that?”

“...Um, I don’t think you’re going to like the answer,” Aldera hedges.

Ardbert crosses his arms. “Try me.”

“The Crystal Exarch summoned me here to save the First?” It comes out more like a question—she remembers how bereaved and angry he had been when Minfilia had said she could save them.

But he does not explode in rage, not as she expects him to. He gets that look on his face again instead, the one where his brows crease and he holds every other feature forcibly still, the one that makes it look like he’s just on the edge of tears, and she wonders if that’s the closest he gets to it. “A foolish venture. Waste of time, even. This world is beyond saving—like those who try to save it. I... I have not forgotten that, at least.”

“Well—”

“But if fate brought you to me, then perhaps there is a reason I endured.”

Aldera clears her throat. He pauses, watching her expectantly. “Minfilia told you that it was not your time?”

“Aye, she did,” Ardbert confirms.

“Then it stands to reason that there is aught left for you to do,” she ventures. “All there is left to do is the remarkably easy task of figuring out what that is.”

“Very helpful,” he deadpans.

She smiles. “That is what I am here for.”

“Right. Yes.” Ardbert shakes his head. “Well then—perhaps by watching you, Warrior of Light, I shall figure it out. But do me a favor and take care out there. This world has had its fill of heroes.”

He leaves, disappearing outside the door, and she wonders where it is that a shade sleeps, if indeed he sleeps at all.

-

_ Thancred. Tell me where Thancred is. What about Thancred? Where is Thancred— _

“...Ah, but you must be wondering about Thancred,” the Exarch says, in that tone of voice she is quickly growing to hate. “He has taken up with... a new companion, and is presently engaged as a wandering hunter of sin eaters.”

“New companion,” Aldera repeats.

“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate, godsdamn him. “Being ever on the move, his whereabouts are often difficult to ascertain, but I am certain your paths will cross ere long.”

The worry clutched tight around her heart like a vise only squeezes further, never mind the rest of it. The way he says it—

“Is he  _ voluntarily  _ engaged as a wandering hunter of sin eaters?” Aldera asks.

But the Exarch is a good liar—or she doesn’t know him well enough yet. “I would say so. Take your time to consider which twin you shall go to first—be sure to prepare adequately ere you return. The roads, as you saw, are treacherous.”

“I don’t need to consider that. Alisaie is in Amh Araeng, you said?” At his wince she has her answer. “I would away, then.”

Alphinaud will keep until she makes her way to Kholusia, and though he has doubtless reunited with Alisaie since her arrival, he would likely prefer Aldera keep an eye on his dear sister anyway. Particularly given the circumstances of their parting—the memory is an unpleasant one, as are the ones directly following it. Yugiri had practically had to guide her by the shoulder off the battlefield as Hien bore Alisaie’s sleeping body away...

He lets out a sigh. “Thank you. She impressed upon me the poor timing of her summoning. Repeatedly. Perhaps my part in sending you to her will garner me some measure of forgiveness...”

“Don’t count on it.”

-

The helmet goes on. And it stays despite the desert heat. Thanalan well taught her that dust storms are irritating beyond measure.

It lends her the chance to see Alisaie in motion—a thrilling thing, even if her dear friend does pretend as if she wasn’t just shouting obscenities at the sin eater she was fighting beforehand. Alisaie tells her everything the Crystal Exarch did and then some. 

“I arrived... away from the target location,” Aldera tells her. “A merchant assumed me one of the afflicted, I think. He directed me to the Crystarium—told me they would ‘take good care of me’. No sooner had I arrived at the gates than the keeper came out to slay a sin eater. One whose corpse left behind the selfsame ring the merchant wore.”

Alisaie nods. “All too common. The man must have been as poor a judge of his sword arm as he was of the character of others.”

“Well. My thanks. Shall we get to the rest of your patrol?” She knows not to tease—not now, anyways, not with the edge to Alisaie’s eyes, the lingering fear of potential loss. With a brief squeeze of her shoulder, Aldera steps away to consult her map.

-

“...I had a few choice words for the Exarch regarding the timing of his summonings...”

“I punched him,” Aldera says, blunt.

Alisaie snorts. “I told him you would. Apparently, so did Thancred. And Urianger. And Y’shtola. And Alphinaud.”

“Everyone? Truly?” She shakes her head and crosses her arms, sighing, though the sound of it comes strangely through her helmet. There is a throbbing beneath her breast at the mention of her erstwhile...  _ Thancred, _ but with the ease of long practice, she ignores it. “Predictability is a pirate’s poison.”

“Says the woman wearing the helm of a dark knight. How many years has it been since you served on a ship?” Alisaie asks dryly.

Aldera shrugs. “Not much worth dwelling on.”

Alisaie gives her a sidewise look, as if to say she is unconvinced, but she moves on without commenting on the note of discord in her voice.

-

What happens to Tesleen is nothing less than horrific.

As if she had needed any more convincing—as if she had any other choice. Alisaie forces her to spend a day within the Crystarium’s walls, most of which she makes use of by preparing for her journey to Kholusia. Ardbert is there when she and Alisaie have dinner in her room at the Pendants, but he says nothing until well after Alisaie has left.

“You’re worried about something.”

Aldera glances at him. “I always am.”

“I saw what happened to the girl. I’ve seen it a thousand times. Distantly, but I remember.” Ardbert paces the room. “There will be more. If you aren’t prepared, then find a way to back out now.”

She slips a bookmark into her tome. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m prepared or not. I have a job to do.”

“No you don’t,” he says, and smiles at her incredulous look. “You haven’t agreed to anything yet. You are seeking out these friends of yours to learn how things stand in this world—and to choose what you will do from there.”

“I am doing so primarily at the Exarch’s insistence. I have no other recourse but to save this star before I return to my own.” What does he  _ want  _ from this exchange? She frowns when he shakes his head.

In the blink of an eye he stands before her with intent curiosity in his own gaze. “You sound like one of those wind-up dolls—making noise because you’re told to. I thought you seemed like one when we met on the Source. You have the same look in your eyes as you did then. Is that why you’re wearing that helmet? To hide the emptiness there?”

“...How is that any of your business?” The gall of him—she remembers now, how irritating that was. “What does any of that matter? I fight. I get the job done. That’s all there is to it, and that’s all there needs to be.”

“You’re lying.”

Aldera smiles at him, not at all nicely. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’m lying or not.”

“Yet,” he says, a challenge. 

“What do you want from me?”

Ardbert cocks his head. “Who says I want anything?”

“Everybody wants something,” she says. “I respect the ones who don’t hide it more.”

He laughs. A short bark of a laugh, hard and amused, and when he looks at her he smiles his own mean little smile. “Everybody does want something, true enough. Even you. The question is—what is it? What do you want?”

“World peace,” she replies, opening her tome again.

“You, me, and everyone and their amaro,” he shoots back. “What do _ you  _ want? Why do you fight?”

“I—”

_...and I will ever be your knight, my dearest Lady Lightwing. _

Aldera falls silent, the half-buried memory coming to the fore and shocking her with the pang of loss that rips through her anew. She curls in on herself, ignoring the way Ardbert’s adversarial stance softens into one that could almost be concerned, and instead tries to focus on keeping her breathing even. On forgetting.

She had thought... she had thought she was over it.

Confusion wars inside her. She tightens her grip on her legs, not caring how they’re near to bruising with the amount of pressure she’s putting on them. Haurchefant. How warm he had been in a sea of ice and snow, ever glad to see her, his face lighting up when she opened the door to his meeting room to see him attending to logistical mundanities for the camp. His smile, his support, his dreams—his love. How glad she had been for all of it.

But Thancred—

Thancred is the one who is still here. And within her breast burns something complicated and aching at the thought of him. It is the contrast between a hearth fire and that of a blazing forest. Clever Thancred, strong Thancred, knowledgeable Thancred, haunted and reticent and yet ever there. Ever sweet, and not as good at hiding it as he wants to be. Thancred whose wellbeing she has not been sure of in moons—who she fears for even now.

Thancred, whose thoughts—whose heart and soul—ever remain with Minfilia.

The man who cannot love her. The man who tries anyway.

What does she want? She knows. She knows what she wants, but what she wants is—it’s—

“I—chose to fight long ago,” she says haltingly, “for the love of a man who died for me. He... he had a creed. ‘To help those in need.’ A knight’s calling. I wanted to honor his memory. I still do. So I carry on.”

“...I see.”

They are silent, for a time.

Ardbert inclines his head. “It’s an honorable creed.”

“He was an honorable man,” Aldera replies.

“Then I’ll accept that as an answer.” He regards her with something like an apology in his eyes. 

She only shrugs. “It’s a fair enough question. You are not the first to ask, and you will not be the last. Just... ware how you tread. There was no need to interrogate me.”

“...Aye.” Yes, definitely somewhat regretful of his chosen method.

“Anyways,” she says, “you were a warrior, right? May I ask after some intricacies of wielding a heavy blade? I manage well enough, but the fighter who does not strive for improvement is the one who dies sooner.”

“The Warrior of Light asking after combat tips from someone she defeated?” Ardbert asks, amused.

Aldera rolls her eyes. “I was acknowledging your abilities. But if you don’t want to—”

“Might could twist my arm. What did you want to know?”

-

“We are family in all but name, my lord...”

Aldera doesn’t hear the rest of it. 

_ Family. _

When they have half a moment to themselves, she draws closer to Alphinaud. “As if I wouldn’t before—but I will protect you with my life. Is this understood?”

“So long as you don’t risk it unduly,” Alphinaud says after a wide-eyed moment, smiling warmly at her. “How could I ask so dear a sister to do such?”

“Ha. You had best not do the same, then.”

-

“Good thing that’s what I’m best at,” Aldera says.

The twins both look at her askance.

“Come now. All present know that it shall have to be me.” She crosses her arms. One can only imagine what face she is making—she certainly sounds irritated enough. “Is this not our duty as Scions? It has been a long while since there was point to be had in asking me what I will.  _ To help those in need— _ now let us away.”

She leaves without looking back. The Exarch looks at the twins, whose brows are each creased. 

“I was worried about that helmet,” Alphinaud says. “I see I was right to be.”

Alisaie sighs. “She only brushed me off when I asked after it. Where’s Thancred when you need him...”

“Pardon?” the Exarch asks, polite, and for his trouble earns a look of distaste from Alisaie.

Alphinaud, for his part, gives the man an equally diplomatic smile. “Our friend puts up a strong front, but she is troubled—though about what it is difficult to discern. Thancred knows her best, and is most able to coax her thoughts into speech. Did you tell her what he and the others are up to?”

“...In a manner of speaking,” is the Exarch’s nonanswer.

“So you did not,” Alphinaud surmises. “Not properly.”

“I told her—this is a conversation best saved for after we aid the people of Holminster Switch,” the Exarch says, shaking his head, and gestures to Lyna. “We must go. I would see those saved who can be saved.”

-

She feels something change when she absorbs the Lightwarden’s aether.

Power—power beyond measure—floods through her body... and something else, too. Something elusive. Something she cannot identify.

But there is no time to investigate. She raises her fist to the sky and brings night to bear upon the land once again.

Aldera is, after all, the Warrior the First needs.

-

“But I wonder... what will it cost you this time?”

Aldera takes her helmet off and sets it on the nightstand. “Knowing my track record,” she says, “at least eighteen near-death experiences.”

“And you sound so pleased about that.” Ardbert crosses his arms.

She shakes her head. “...We have both lost people. I have only today crested twenty-two winters, and while I have seen much, the loss is still near to me.”

“Twenty-two? I shudder to think of what sort of combatant you’ll become given a decade’s time,” he says, and it sounds almost friendly.

Aldera smiles without humor. “People like you and I don’t tend to live that long. At any rate—I am going to bathe. Pray go and do whatever it is that shades do.”

“R-right.” He hastens through the door, and her smile takes on a tinge of amusement as she watches him go.

-

“The Oracle of Light—Minfilia,” says Lyna.

And with a feeling as if the air has been knocked out of her, Aldera knows exactly why Thancred has been on the road all this time.

_ So that’s it, then,  _ she thinks, still and tense. 

The twins are watching her. She wishes they would stop. She keeps herself still as the night air and listens as Lyna speaks of generations of Minfilias—plural, like there’s more than one—and wonders how young this young woman bearing her friend’s name is. How far Thancred has gone for her already.

“I had intended to speak to you of Minfilia—” the Exarch starts, and falls short as she whips around to glare at him, which, happily for her, is no less effective for her helmet being on.

Exerting a great amount of self-control, Aldera does not take a threatening step forward. “Then speak.”

“Rather than doing that, I am afraid I must see to war. I would bid you seek out Moren—he is better equipped to tell the tale.”

“Fine.” She leaves at a brisk clip, forcing the twins to run to keep up with her, and wonders why in the name of all the gods it had to be this. 

-

Every Minfilia fights, and every Minfilia falls.

Fights and fights and fights again—until her end, or until they win. No other option. No other fate.

Aldera’s suspicions are only further confirmed when Moren tells them that a gallant hero stole into Eulmore three years past to rescue the current Minfilia. Gods, the fool—but would she not do the same? Whatever her own feelings—no child deserves such a life, such a fate. And she saw Eulmore. The place is twisted from the inside out.

“Aldera. A word—outside?” Alphinaud tilts his head toward the door, but it is not a question.

She follows the twins out with a torrent of emotion raging within her heart. Near as soon as they are stopped for a chat, Alisaie spins toward her and steps into her personal space. “You’re sparking with darkness, Aldera. Keep a handle on yourself.”

“...They  _ forced _ her to fight,” Aldera manages to get out after a long, tense moment, looking down. “She had no _ choice. _ She never had a  _ choice. _ And we all know where Thancred is—how much he cares for her, regardless of how many hers there have been. He will go to her because she bears the name Minfilia. If she’s been retaken, he’s going to do some damn fool thing to try to free her again, and he could very well get himself killed for it.”

“Well, on that you and I are in agreement,” Alisaie sighs, stepping back.

Alphinaud nods. “’Tis why they have been wandering the land—and why we have not yet had the chance to meet them.”

“It could only be the original Minfilia that the people witnessed halt the Flood. The original Oracle of Light. But while there’s plainly some connection between the woman we knew and her namesakes, the fact that these girls do not share her memory must mean that they cannot be the same person.” Alisaie pauses. “...Thancred has to understand that.”

“I have no doubt that he understands,” Alphinaud says with crossed arms, voicing the selfsame thought that is currently rattling in Aldera’s mind like a rabid moogle. “The question is how he feels.”

Aldera looks down at her feet. “He would not forsake her, no matter what. Like I said.”

“You know... if you two think we should go rescue Minfilia, you could just  _ say _ that,” Alisaie mutters.

Alphinaud opens his mouth.

“As it happens, I agree with you both. She has Hydaelyn’s blessing, doesn’t she? And we could always use another one of those on our side. Right?”

“Even aside from that,” Aldera manages, with a fairly level voice, too, “no child deserves a life locked away in a cage.”

“I see you three have made your resolve.”

The Exarch. And a promise of hope.

_ I do believe this is the most initiative I’ve seen any city-state take on behalf of something beyond itself, _ she muses to herself. Begrudgingly, she finds herself... not displeased.

-

“You’re her,” says little Minfilia. “The Warrior.” She pauses. “But... aren’t you a summoner?”

Aldera breathes out. Smiles. “I am. But I have had cause to take up the armor of the dark knight.”

“Powerful Light, powerful Darkness,” the girl reasons. “I... I think that makes sense. To me, anyways.”

And Aldera—

Aldera cannot help but love her. There is something about the girl that washes away her internal conflict over the question of _ Minfilia _ —instead there is this, the girl, who is looking at her with wide eyes. She holds out her hand. “Come with me, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” Minfilia whispers. “I’m so sorry... all this trouble over me...”

“You are no trouble at all,” Aldera says firmly, kneeling down to help little Minfilia up. She cups the girl’s face briefly. “There will be time for apologies later. Come on. Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

Minfilia nods, biting her lip.

-

_ Thancred— _

_ Thancred, Thancred, _ Thancred—

Aldera wants to collapse with the weight of her relief. He’s here and real and alive. 

“It’s good to see you again, my friends,” he says after a time, turning to them with a small smile. His eyes linger on her—on the helmet. “I don’t know about you, but it feels like years since last we met. Five of them, in my case.”

“I see your sense of humor is terrible as ever,” Aldera says—but she’s too relieved to put the proper bite into it. Still, little Minfilia’s eyes widen, as if she’s said the unthinkable.

Thancred’s smile widens an ilm. Alisaie crosses her arms, smirking. “Why, it only feels like one to me... but long enough to warrant a more convivial reunion, either way.”

But all the relief Aldera feels comes to a crashing halt when the conversation wends to the primary point of interest: what he was doing in Laxan Loft.

“The girl,” he says, a stiffness to his tone, as if Minfilia is a tagalong he picked up along the way. “Minfilia. She and I were traveling together, hunting sin eaters.”

_ I’m so sorry,  _ she’d said when Aldera had freed her.  _ All this trouble over me.  _

Then Ran’jit, sneering at this girl—this child—for not being up to the snuff of a general of decades’ worth of renown.

_ Thancred... _ Aldera thinks, tensing.

She isn’t stupid, she doesn’t think.  _ She _ can see the worry in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way Minfilia has not left his peripheral vision for even a moment since their mad dash past the borders of the faerie kingdom. Minfilia had wielded her daggers with careful hands, and her movement in battle had been adroit—she had done well. If her opponent had not been Ran’jit, she may well even have been a significant contributor to the melee. Thancred—for it has to have been Thancred—has taught her well.

But Minfilia doesn’t seem to see that worry. The way it is concern rather than anger that has Thancred drawn up tight.

And she mislikes the way Minfilia’s head is bowed. How her shoulders are drawn in to herself, as if to make herself smaller. As if to take up as little space as possible.

“...and, for some reason, went abruptly off on her own,” he is saying.

Minfilia flinches. Silent—small—she  _ has  _ learned to minimize herself. Aldera weaves around Alisaie to stand at Minfilia’s shoulder, staring directly at Thancred as his eyes track her movement. He continues talking—but there’s questions in his eyes.

Good, she thinks. He had better have questions.

Aldera attends to their objectives, both things which she would have done sooner or later regardless. 

It is Alisaie, though, who asks Minfilia why, and Aldera pushes down the way Minfilia’s surprised step backward makes her want to knock some skulls together. 

Minfilia turns to look at her. “...You,” she says, her voice quiet, and soft, and hesitant. “The hero from another world. I was asleep when I felt it—a presence. Someone I was meant to meet. They were close... and I knew I had to go to them.” Her voice trembles, but she speaks on. “But... with all the commotion in Lakeland... I was afraid Thancred wouldn’t—let me.”

“And would I have been wrong?” Thancred breaks in, irritated, and he glares at Aldera when she takes a step forward.  _ Don’t, _ his eyes say. Aldera ignores him and angles herself so she is partially in front of little Minfilia. “Had I arrived a moment later, you would be back in your cell in Eulmore. And now we have Ran’jit snapping at our heels! You really have outdone yourself this time.”

Aldera snaps. She can hear the little twang go off at the back of her mind, and suddenly there is Fray, sitting pretty just beneath the surface again.  _ “Thancred.” _

“It’s alright.” Minfilia’s hand drops away from where she has seized Aldera’s gauntlet. She curls in on herself. “I’m sorry. Thank you for saving me.”

He looks between them, silent, frowning, and with something she doesn’t understand in his gaze. 

And that’s when the pixies make themselves known.

-

Urianger is much changed—and it is delightful.

“Good job,” Aldera says after a moment of silent examination. He tilts his head in silent question. “Your outfit. It’s color-coordinated—and the golds suit you. Though I didn’t think hermithood would be the thing to cause you to lean into your fashion sense.”

Minfilia giggles at the deeply satisfied look on Urianger’s face, then quickly cuts herself off, peeking up at Thancred as if she is afraid she has heard. 

_ Kill,  _ Fray says when Thancred dismisses her out the door.

_ No,  _ Aldera says back, but her fist clenches for a moment.

Urianger smiles. “Mine thanks to you. Though ‘twould be remiss of me to go without mentioning that ‘twas not I who chose thusly—it was Lady Katliss of the Crystalline Mean.”

“I shall have to check in with her when it is safe to return, then,” Aldera muses. “Tataru made me this—it suits very well—but she rather sparked an interest in design I heretofore was unaware of—”

“What, are you going to draft up some armor to match that helm you’ve been keeping on?” Thancred asks, smiling, but his words are pointed, and his arms crossed.

She gives him a dull look that he cannot see and turns back to Urianger. “Such questions, which I am hearing overfrequently for my tastes, are beside the point. I am of a mind to learn more of the craft. But I prattle. Urianger, it is good to see you.”

“And you, hale and whole.” Urianger grows somber.

Aldera feels the chill coming back on—the call of the abyss, reaching out as turmoil bubbles within her—and she nods. “Your vision. Would you share it with me?”

“I would. Listen well.” He closes his eyes.

-

“Gods. I am still thinking on the nomenclature detail. That would change a fair few fundamental assumptions about the outworkings of aspected aetheric energy, wouldn’t it?” Aldera asks, tapping her chin as she thinks. “I ought to send Feo Ul to Cid with this information—he would be able to better use it. Oh, but I would love to be there myself when Feo Ul and Nero meet...”

Urianger clears his throat. His eyes twinkle as he regards Aldera—Thancred can tell how relieved he is to see her well, and unfortunately for him (unfortunate since he’s in the hot seat about now), he can relate. “That it would, Lady Lightwing, though I needs must ask that you refrain until such a time as you may explain it yourself in person. Such an occasion would merit the sending along of a few parcels, you see.”

“Ah, so I would play postmaster. That would be a change from the usual.” She seems almost cheerful as she speaks. Almost. “Well then. What would you have me do for this pixie gift, Urianger?”

“I shall explain...”

Thancred tunes out as Urianger requisitions his help for some task, then sends Aldera out on hers. Together they watch as Aldera nods in understanding, turns, narrowly avoids tripping over a book, and strides out the door at her usual businesslike clip. Then he senses Urianger watching him out of the corner of his eye. Thancred crosses his arms with a sigh.

“Urianger,” he says, “I do believe she is angry with me.”

Urianger inclines his head. “’Tis no difficult thing to surmise.”

“The trouble is that helmet. She hates having her head covered. If she’s keeping the damned thing on...”

His old friend hums. “So it is her face you rely upon to lend you insight as to her moods? Pray look not to the body, but to her actions. Or, perhaps...” He makes his way to the window, and gestures for Thancred to join him. “You might merely look upon her as she is now.”

Thancred does as Urianger bids, stepping lightly as he does. What he sees when he looks out makes his heart throb.

Aldera has, as usual, been drawn to someone in need of help. She is kneeling in the grass beside Minfilia’s seat, explaining something to the girl that he cannot quite make out—but the tone of her voice is pleased, and Minfilia’s shoulders have relaxed somewhat, which is what they call “a minor miracle” in most parts. After a moment Minfilia responds, thoughtful and tentative, and Aldera nods in answer. The familiar motions and aetheric reactions that accompany Minfilia’s imbuements are brighter. More vivid.

“Excellent work, darling,” Aldera says, loud enough to be heard over the sound of magick working, and a jolt goes through him as Minfilia looks at her in awe.

_ Darling. _

Well. He knows where she picked _ that  _ one up.

“She was ill pleased,” Urianger says, “when in thy usual habit you dismissed Minfilia out of doors.”

Thancred crosses his arms. “She can continue to be ill pleased if that is her concern.”

“Thou knowest such is far from her true reasons for her upset.” 

Even Urianger is lecturing him. He sighs. “...You know what? I’m going to go get your pomegranates. I’ll be back.”

-

“Urianger, there’s something you ought to know,” Aldera murmurs after her return, but before Thancred’s. Urianger inclines his head. She breathes in. “When I absorbed the Lightwarden’s aether—I felt something. I know not what. Grasping it in the moment was all but impossible. But after hearing the tale of what normally happens, it concerned me. If you could keep watch...”

Urianger nods. “I shall do as you request.”

“And if I take in too much—”

He closes his eyes, pained at the thought of what she is about to ask of him.

Aldera looks down. “I am sorry. Please, Urianger. There is... there is a reason I am wearing this helmet without fail. I can tell that the aether is not gone. It does not simply disappear—it has to go somewhere, and I fear where it may be going. I could not bear to alarum the others after they spoke so earnestly of what needs to be done.”

“Bear in mind that sustaining strength which Hydaelyn’s blessing doth grant unto thee,” Urianger says, quiet. “It may not come to that.”

She looks up at him for a silent moment. “...How many Lightwardens are there?”

“We have thus far identified four, though in accordance with the rules we have discerned to their existence, it is all but certain that five there must be.”

“Keep watch,” Aldera says again, for want of something better to say. She closes her eyes. “Particularly after each. And pray speak of this to no one else.”

He looks so unhappy—but he understands, Twelve bless him. “...As you wish.” 

-

_ Good,  _ Aldera thinks, savagely pushing down the malcontent in her breast as her reticent friends display rare approval for little Minfilia.  _ Good. Little girls deserve the world—deserve to be loved— _

_ I will do all I can to contribute— _

_ “—my  _ Minfilia,” Thancred says.

Something in Aldera cracks. 

She knows the vision is coming before it gets its hooks in her. 

_ No,  _ she screams silently as it takes her.  _ No, no, no—I don’t want to—by all the gods, do _ not—

But the Echo cares not. Aldera sees it all. Every agonized ilm of Thancred’s being, crying out for the woman he loves beyond all, and she already somewhere beyond him. The weight of the years sits in the older Minfilia’s voice—as does the weight of guilt. Guilt for all the children whose lives were subsumed by hers.

He  _ loves her. _

Aldera distantly recognizes the burning in her chest, the way it is scorching and freezing at once, eating away and bursting apart in measures, as she returns to reality.  _ Oh, _ she thinks.  _ Oh. _

_ This is how it ends. _

That she already knew does nothing to ease the blow.

Thancred will not look at either of them. She doesn’t want him to look at her. “...Of that day, I have not spoken.”

Silence.

Do they want her to respond? Is he waiting for something?

She  _ cannot.  _ To do so would be to shed all impartiality—and she does not want to know what he wants, nor how he wants this to end. It is all she can do to continue breathing, in and out, all the world narrowing in to her combat boots.

Urianger’s gaze is on her, and then Thancred has turned to look at her, too. So they  _ were _ waiting. Aldera says nothing. She breathes.

She breathes  _ very carefully. _

“With the coming of another possessed by the blessing of the Light, the First hath begun to rise up in defiance of its fate,” Urianger says finally. “The question remaineth, however... Who will take up the flame of hope which Minfilia hath borne for so long? Whether we will it or no, the choice must soon be made.”

Aldera is silent. Thancred is silent.

An ocean of secrets between them, she thinks miserably, but for the Echo’s cruel call. She could have kept pretending. She could have, if she had not seen the agony in his eyes nor heard the anguish in his voice.

Urianger looks between them. The door opens, then, and little Minfilia rushes back in, breaking the unspoken tension in the room. 

-

_ Well, milady,  _ Urianger thinks, looking between the two lovers, torn apart by things unsaid, at the silent, localized whirlpool of negativity emanating off of Aldera and the fear and pain in Thancred’s eyes, _ thy estimate ‘twas... unfortunate in the shortness of its measurement. It shall be long ere these two come hither to whence thou wished for them to abide... _

-

She is mute for some days, after that, and her long-absent journals return to the fore.

And she will not speak to him beyond what is absolutely necessary for the sake of their duty.

Thancred knows what she saw. He  _ knows,  _ and he is not proud of how he acted in his grief. But he can hardly take any of it back—and he wouldn’t want to, regardless. To do so would be frankly insulting to all involved—himself, Minfilia, the girl... and to Aldera. 

Aldera.

The woman he has waited for in hope and yearned after for a full five years, telling the girl all he could of her, of her courage and strength and heroism. Who he has dreamed of in—varying situations—night after night. And now she is here and her body is wound tight with tension all day and her helm even stays on when she sleeps and she has taken to young Minfilia with a care and ferocity that has surprised him, none the least because that protectiveness has taken the form of defending Minfilia... against him.

He grumbles wordlessly to himself. Minfilia, walking alongside him, looks up in alarum; he spares her a brief smile and a pat on the shoulder, but she watches him with concerned eyes for a moment longer before returning her gaze to her feet. Clever girl.

Clever Minfilia.

Aldera is walking up ahead, listening to the twins and Urianger talk and seemingly otherwise preoccupied with keeping track of their surroundings. If she was listening to his every movement, however, he should hardly be surprised. 

_ This is a bloody mess,  _ Thancred quietly acknowledges to himself. The two years he spent alone here on the First had seen him worry endlessly over her—over how she was faring, and how she had taken what had happened to him. It had been Y’shtola who chanced upon him during a visit to the Crystarium to restock ere he set out to follow the Oracle’s trail, and her who spoke of Aldera’s withdrawal back into herself. Scarce weeks had passed between his calling and that of Y’shtola’s and Urianger’s, but in that time Aldera and Alisaie had already grown to be on edge, without the usual tempering influence of Alphinaud to stay them.

Naturally, Alphinaud had no news to share in that regard, but he did hear of Alisaie’s arrival through the linkpearl channels he set up with Urianger and the Exarch. She had been most displeased—and it was her colorful description of Aldera’s state of mind and the untimeliness of the Exarch’s call that had brought Thancred’s worry back to the fore. Which, as it has turned out, was the proper thing to be feeling.

Aldera is pretending.

Rather poorly, too. Needing a mask to play her part? Who does she think she’s fooling?

He remembers, in a time that seems like a lifetime ago, the look on her face when he told her that they—the Scions—cared for her. She had not believed him. In fact, there had been rigidly controlled anger in the way her hands fisted in the thick duvet, as if the fact of them doing so had been infuriating beyond measure. He wonders if she has _ ever _ believed them, and, if so, what she thinks drives them to continually entrust their lives to her. Duty? Mayhaps. But no—it cannot be that simple. Not with her.

There is something more to her behavior, something beside even how poorly she is taking what happened between him and Minfilia. Of that he is almost certain. 

“Thancred?” Minfilia asks in a whisper. He looks down to meet her worried stare. She pauses for a moment. “I—I noticed something. Or—saw something. When she freed me.”

He blinks. “Yes?”

“She’s sad. There is so much grief in her,” says his charge, still whispering, her gaze drifting to where Aldera is listening to Alphinaud. “I saw... I saw her sitting alone in front of a grave. She went there a lot. She still does.”

“Does she,” he says quietly, something in his heart cracking open. _ Aldera... _

Minfilia swallows. “What... what happened to her?”

“It might be best to ask her. It is her story to tell,” Thancred tells her. But Minfilia has seized on something that helps—that Aldera has continued to linger by Lord Haurchefant’s grave. That she has continued to mourn, whether it is still just her past lover and the Lady Iceheart who she grieves for or if the grave has come to represent more than that to her. 

The look Minfilia gives him is careful and considering. She’s been doing that more and more often, these days. “But you must have been a part of it—”

“Not that one,” he mutters, his eyes flicking back to Aldera, who has run further ahead to clear their path. 

Minfilia blinks and looks down. “Oh. Okay.”

_ Gods. Why does it always have to be you?  _ he thinks, frowning at the ferocity with which Aldera hacks the local wildlife into bloody chunks of submission. Alisaie turns her head and gives him a pointed and unappreciative glare; his brows shoot up as he matches her, stare for stare. This is beyond even his ability to help their lady of darkness work through—and he doesn’t think she’d welcome it, either, not right now. Not like this. 

Not when he is the cause.

Let it never be said that he is not a petty man. He wins the stare-off, even though it puts Alisaie into a foul mood.

-

“Wake up, damn you!”

Aldera jolts. Blinks. Finds herself underwater. All around her is a drowned city, and above her is Ardbert, worry in his eyes. She shakes herself awake and swims up to be of a level to meet his gaze. “Are you alright?”

“I’m dead,” Ardbert deadpans.

“Oh, right.” Aldera looks down. The kelp she’d been sleeping on had been soft... and almost fuzzy. “Well, I should go back to sleep—”

Ardbert snorts. “Oh no you don’t. Your friends are looking for you up above—frantic, them, even... what was his name... Thancred.”

“...And to sleep I return,” she decides.

“You really want to waste time on the bottom of a lakebed while an army is on your tail?” he asks, brows raised. “Or are you that frightened of the man you love?”

“It’s not—!” Aldera starts to shout. She cuts herself off, wrapping her arms around herself, wishing she had changed back from her summoner’s garb into the armor of the dark knight after the battle was done. Godsdamn Thancred deciding to bear the defensive brunt and not taking no for an answer... “I don’t—I can’t—”

Ardbert crosses his arms. “None of you blighters are any bloody good at _ communication. _ Not that I can talk, mind, but my friends and I told each other when we had issues going on. Well. Most of us, anyways. ...Sort of. You know what? Mayhaps it’s not my place to be talking.”

“The  _ problem _ is that we have  _ so many other problems,”  _ she manages after a long moment of struggling with herself.

He gives her a level stare, and she does not like how small it makes her feel. “Rather think that’s only the tip of  _ your _ iceberg. How long have you known about his affection for the—’old’ Minfilia?”

“...From the start.” It costs her something, to put that to words. She closes her eyes.

Fury, anguish,  _ hurt— _ it feels dimmer down here, as if the water dulls the fiercest edge with which the vision had cut her.

“...I’m sorry.” He tries to put a hand on her shoulder, and when it connects, he floats back a bit in shock. Still not used to it, then. But he quickly regains himself. “Like I said, they’re looking for you up above. The twin with the red hair tie keeps diving in here—has the same handy trick as you, I s’pose. But you should see how your man is tearing the flower fields apart in search of you. Like he might find you if he lifts every boulder in the damn place.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asks, haggard. Thancred had yelled and shouted and been on the brink of tears speaking with the Minfilia of eld, that day in Amh Araeng. 

“I don’t know. ‘s just... something you wouldn’t know otherwise.”

Aldera manages something resembling a smile. “Maybe I should have you do the reconnaissance.”

“Not on your life,” Ardbert says companionably. “This is your fight. My turn to watch.”

“I suppose there is no rest for the wicked,” she muses.

He shakes his head. “That there isn’t. By the by, the first rule of dealing with the Fuath... is _ not  _ to deal with the Fuath. It’s said they’re born of the souls of the drowned. Your luck strikes again.”

“May it be more fatal next time,” she mutters. 

Ardbert thumps her on the head.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did.” He crosses his arms. “I doubt you’d be too pleased to end up like this place and its people when you have so much left to do.”

“Tell me about them,” Aldera says, hoping he’ll let her desire to stay down here just a little longer slide.

Fortune indeed—Ardbert sighs. “Fine. This was the Kingdom of Voeburt...”

-

She changes back into the armor of the dark knight before she ascends to the surface.

Thancred is the first to catch sight of her. Her heart throbs as his eyes widen and soften, as the tension in his shoulders drops for a moment, as he speaks out of relief. “Aldera!”

“...Hi, everyone,” she says, feeling awkward with all of them staring at her.

Alisaie is in front of her and shaking her shoulders before she has half a moment more of it. “What happened? Have you any idea how worried we were?! To wash up on the shore, only to find you weren’t with us?!”

“I had a chat with some kelp,” Aldera says.

The stunned silence is palpable.

“It was very informative kelp,” she adds. “It taught me about the history of the Kingdom of Voeburt.”

Ardbert groans. “Are you really—why am I even asking? Of course you are.”

“...The worst part of that helmet is that I think you might be serious,” Alphinaud says, shaking his head.

Alisaie is nearly glaring at her. “Kelp?”

“It’s very fuzzy,” Aldera says thoughtfully.

Thancred sighs. “...Well, at least you’re none the worse for the wear. Nor are we. Our work here is done—and with kelp-gained, or perhaps induced, knowledge besides.”

“And on to the next,” she agrees with rather less verve. He didn’t expect that, she can tell, but she happily has no need to explain herself when Sul Uin catches up to them with news of the Eulmoran army traipsing toward Il Mheg. Aldera is forgotten in the rush, and it is the Warrior of Darkness who tells them that defeating the Lightwarden was always going to fall to her, regardless.

She scouts ahead as the twins leave. As she goes, she can feel Thancred’s gaze on her back.

-

The first watch falls to Aldera. Ardbert takes a wordless seat beside her as she sits with her legs drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Endless light means there is no night—means there is more to watch for. Not that anything is really interested in a meal with as many pointy edges as their party of four has.

So she thinks. Ardbert stares into the middle distance as she stares at the edge between her boots and the ground.

Being knocked out every once in a while probably isn’t the ideal state of affairs. But it had helped, having her chain of thought so thoroughly disrupted. Anguish no longer fully rules her thoughts.

Oh, it is still there, of course. She knew he wasn’t being honest with himself, or with her, or with anyone—not as far as Minfilia was concerned. It does not take a genius. And it hurts _ —it hurts it hurts it hurts— _ and Fray, or the part of herself that she regards as being Fray, is practically frothing with the rage of it. Now that she has the truth, though...

...Well. Now that she has the truth of it, is there not but one thing to be done?

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at that blade of grass,” Ardbert says, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She smiles beneath her helmet, but otherwise does not respond. She is not so good or selfless a woman so as to simply and easily accept the fact that the affections of the one she loves lie with another—but she likes to think she is a decent enough person that nurturing a child’s growth is its own reward. If Thancred cannot bring himself to encourage young Minfilia to fulfill her role... to truly become the Oracle of Light... then another must do so. 

What was between Thancred and the Minfilia of eld is for him to grapple with. She had borne witness to that Minfilia’s wish: for the child to discover what it is she wants to do, who she wants to become. What part she wants to play in this grand piece of theater. 

The rest of it—the rest of it—it... it does not matter. It cannot. Not when so much is at stake. 

Besides, though he holds himself apart from her, he cares for the girl. 

That’s all there is to it, then.

Fray howls beneath, but she ignores him with the ease of long practice. Having a course of action feels better than being lost in a fog of pain. Better to forget. In time it will come a little easier.

Ardbert rests his elbows on his knees and sighs loudly. “Whatever you’ve decided on—don’t let it kill you, Aldera. Your friends aren’t the only ones worried.”

“As if I’ve the luxury,” she murmurs, dark and dry and weary. No, to die in the near future would be to abandon two worlds to their fates, and it would be remiss of her to pretend otherwise. 

-

“...Hmm, yes, I’d say that’s a valid excuse for lateness. You are hereby forgiven.” He’s testing the waters—and of course he does so through flirting. Minfilia is looking between them with poorly-hidden fascination and trepidation. Thancred—Thancred is looking at her. Waiting.

Aldera shrugs. “Magnanimous of you. I will preoccupy myself until Urianger arrives.”

And she does.

-

“E-excuse me, Aldera, but I couldn’t help overhearing,” Minfilia stammers. “If you mean to undertake this task—would... would you let me accompany you? I would learn from you, and help in what little way I can...”

Aldera smiles at her, then realizes she can’t see it, and nods instead. “Of course you may. I should be glad for your help.”

“Ah—wonderful! Thank you so much!” 

-

“...I realized then that it was the only reason he kept me close,” Minfilia admits bitterly. “As a contingency. The truth is, he can’t stand to be around me. Because I’m not her.”

Aldera knows what the poor girl is going to say. What she believes.

“Because I’m not his Minfilia.”

_ Thancred, you bastard motherfucker, _ Aldera thinks. She closes her eyes. Grits her teeth. Struggles with her temper.  _ I am going to  _ kill  _ you. _

She wants to cry when Minfilia speaks further—when she speaks of what happened in Nabaath Areng, when she tells Aldera what happened afterward, when she voices her helplessness and her fears with the same quiet resignation that Aldera herself has held in her heart from the moment she heard he traveled in the company of a new companion. This child deserves better than to be treated as a burden. Better. So much better.

And if Thancred will not do it she will beat sense into him and do it herself.

“She should be the one to live on,” Minfilia says, looking her in the eye. “That’s why I tried to find you—because I knew that was what she wanted.”

_ No—  _

Aldera opens her mouth.

Minfilia brings one hand close, resting lightly over her heart, looking down. “But—now that you’re here—I’m not entirely sure what it was she intended me to do. Was I meant to tell you something? Or bring you to someone? Or somewhere? I can feel the answer at the edge of my mind, just out of reach—”

Something screams. The castle screams. And there is no further time to speak of it.

-

“Ard... bert?”

Aldera inhales, sharp, quiet. She does not know where Ardbert is at the moment—but she knew this amaro’s name, as if on instinct, as she knows the grief that floods Seto’s eyes when he beholds her and finds not Ardbert but a girl in dark armor.

She does not ask. Nor does she seek out her shade, having an inkling as to what keeps him from peering over her shoulder. Instead she returns to Seto whilst the others are busy familiarizing themselves with the amaro, and she kneels at his side, holding her hand out to him in silent question.

“I will not deny you,” Seto says quietly, and she runs her fingers gently through fur and feather. “There is such grief in you already, child. How could I knowingly allow you to face such a fate when the burdens you bear already threaten to pull you beneath their tide?”

“Because it is something I must do. Because it is my fate to fight,” Aldera says, equally as quiet.

Seto shakes his head. “Yet you resent it, even as you push on. Will you not lay down your fate? Can you not rest?”

“There is no rest for one such as I. No one else may face the Wardens.”

“You owe this land nothing. You will not change the fae folk in so doing,” is the searching response. “Why, then?”

Aldera closes her eyes. “To do what no one else can.”

“The same words... and no less solemnity for it. Can it be coincidence...?” Seto shakes himself. “Very well, child. I shall test you. Come.”

-

“He was a good man. He deserved to be happy. I wish I could have told him that, at least...”

She is crying. She can sense Ardbert now, looking up at his old friend with tears in his own eyes, can feel the moment the man breaks and turns away, going to wherever it is that shades go, overcome by emotion. So loyal and steadfast a friend as Seto, too, deserves to know that which is truth—and so she looks up at him, intent, and hopes he will understand what she says. “Ardbert knows how you feel. Of that, I am certain.”

Urianger’s stare is burning a hole into the back of her head.

“You remind me of him,” Seto says. “Your kindness... when we amaro were created, we were granted the ability to perceive souls. Thus did we recognize our masters. That ability has long since faded from our kind. But perhaps due to my reversion, I can see your soul. ...Faintly, but surely. It is reminiscent of Ardbert’s. Strikingly so.”

Aldera tilts her head—it is not surprising, not to her, not deep down. It feels like part of her knew it all along. From the moment their eyes connected as the Warriors of Darkness held their crystals aloft.

Seto inclines his own head. “Of course, you are you, and no one else. We are defined not by the soul we are born with, but the path we walk. Nevertheless... I cannot help but feel that this is more than mere coincidence...”

“We share this feeling,” she says. 

His eyes, dew-like and round, close for the briefest of moments. “That is why I will place my faith in you. The relic is yours.”

-

“In all things, balance must be preserved... and the same will be asked of you.” Feo Ul is unusually somber, not that the moment does not warrant it. Aldera smiles, halfhearted. They peer at her. “But you know this already.”

“Say nothing to the others,” she cautions gently.

Feo Ul shakes their head. “I cannot claim not to understand. An honorable soul, you are, and such beauty is to be commended... by others... from a distance, seeing as you are mine. But redressing a balance is no small task, sweetest of saplings, and your most beauteous of branches worries for your aching heart and weary soul.”

“No other recourse,” she says. “and no other path. I have always known how this was going to end.”

-

Feo Ul drifts closer to her when the deed is done, their hands resting on one of her shoulders. “You have done it, my lovely sapling.”

“...Can I ask you to do something, Feo Ul, ere we deal with the relics?” Aldera says, tentative.

They smile. “Speak, and your branch shall hear you out.”

“Look,” she says, taking her helmet off, “and tell me what you see.”

Feo Ul is silent. Their eyes take her in and sorrow clouds them.

“Is it terrible?”

They shake their head, and with a moment’s thought, they then wave their hand, conjuring a mirror out of thin air to show her her own face. “No, my sapling, not yet. But you have begun to change. See your hair—your markings—your eyes—they glow.”

“Then it is as I thought. Do you... is there... is there any way to hide this?” But before Feo Ul can answer she shakes her head. “Never mind. I would not tax you overmuch. The relics remain, and sing with power besides. Tell me of them.”

-

Aldera hears something inside herself turn, crackle, go  _ prrink, _ and break. She starts laughing—with an edge of hysteria, sure, and hard enough that she has to lean over a bit, but laughing all the same. “You came all this way—directly into the heart of the city—just to  _ bitch at me?  _ You? The Head Honcho? The Big Cheese? Why in all the bloody names of the gods would you  _ do  _ that?”

“Cooperation,” says Emet-Selch, leaning into her personal space, ignoring the way Thancred’s eyes burn into him—and the way Thancred takes several pointed steps closer, his hand still on his gunblade.

“You’re fucking insane,” Aldera says. “What the fuck.”

“Hear me out, now...”

-

“Run along,” Alisaie says, and quite summarily dismissed, Aldera blinks in her friends’ wake. It’s like none of them want to give her even a chance to object to Alisaie’s ruling... and it smells suspiciously of collusion. Minfilia pauses, glancing back at her, and Aldera waves her on. With a worried smile the girl turns to catch up to Thancred. Aldera watches them proceed up the stairs together. Something in her aches.

“You mortals and your entanglements,” says Emet-Selch, directly behind her.

Aldera does not turn. “Didn’t you father children?”

_ “My.  _ I’m surprised you thought to bring it up.” He crosses his arms—she hears the movement of fabric. “Yes, I did. And I did it without half the fuss you have, dealing with that petty man.”

“He did not take kindly to possession,” she says, dry, the  _ what, did you expect any different?  _ implied in her tone.

Emet-Selch sighs dramatically. She has the impression he does everything with a sense of drama. “Ah, but it is what all Ascians do.”

“Make nuisances of yourselves—yes, you do. Why are you speaking to me if you’re so terribly frightened of the Ascian-slayer?” Aldera asks.

“I don’t know about  _ frightened,” _ he demurrs. “Appropriately cautious, more like. But also appropriately  _ curious.  _ You are possessed of an unfortunate strength of will—one that sees you staying your course, despite the dangers. ‘To help those in need’, was it? How terribly selfless.”

“Yet another person attempting to discern my motives. Look deeper if you like—there’s not much more to say. Bye,” Aldera says, turning and making for the aetheryte plaza, completely unsurprised when he easily keeps pace with her.

Whatever he wants, he is in no rush to get it. He keeps her company as she wanders first through the library, then when she takes the aetheryte into the markets, browsing the stalls as dusk falls and the lanterns flicker on. She would be mad to trust him in the least—but if he were about to stick a poisoned dagger in her back, she rather thinks he would have done so by now and been done with it. When her hand lingers on a persimmon, thinking of the look on Yotsuyu’s face as she died thinking of Gosetsu, Emet-Selch coughs politely. “Are you going to buy that, or stare at it all night?”

“I shall do as I will,” she says.

“Of course you will. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You are, after all, the hero,” he muses.

Aldera gives him an incredulous look. “This is a persimmon.”

“And you weren’t talking about persimmons,” he says, waggling his finger in her face. “What honesty our vaunted hero has.”

She gives the finger an unpleasant look. “As I am sure you already know... I was raised a pirate.”

“Ah, so your tale is one not only of dashing bravery, but redemption from villainy. Trite—but effective.” Emet-Selch is, Aldera decides, very annoying.

After a moment longer of thought, she buys three persimmons. “Life is already bad comedy. I would not expect overmuch from it in terms of excellence.”

“And why is that?”

“You’re immortal,” Aldera says. “You tell me.”

Emet-Selch sighs again, crossing his arms, casting his eyes heavensward and tilting his head just so. “You are being _ remarkably _ uncooperative. I’m trying to get to know you here! Give me something to work with.”

“Have you considered that I don’t want you to know me?”

“The thought did cross my mind, and I decided summarily to ignore it.”

Aldera rolls her eyes. “Of course. I am leaving. Leave me be.”

“Cold as ice. Very well. I shall leave you in the spirit of friendship,” he says, as if he is granting her a massive favor. “But as I said earlier—you shall see me again soon. Do improve your mood before then, you little cloud of gloom.”

With that he turns and saunters, actually  _ saunters, _ into the crowd, quickly disappearing to her eye. Aldera keeps her irritation to herself—doubtless he is watching, and that would only give him satisfaction. She takes her time with her purchases. Snacks for the road, supplies to repair her armor, replenishing her stock of tinctures, poultices, and the like... 

She will, after all, be back on the road soon.

-

“...There is but one manner of creature in this world whose aether is suffused with such an abundance of light,” Y’shtola says, her voice level.

Aldera can feel her heart kick into rapid gear. Y’shtola does not recognize her. Y’shtola sees the aether of the Lightwardens, and she does not see Aldera. She swallows. “There is an explanation for that.”

“...No.” Y’shtola takes a step back. Her brows draw together in upset, and Aldera feels aether poking at her—at her edges. “No, it cannot be.”

“It is indeed our dearest friend and greatest hero,” Urianger says, and from where Aldera stands she can see him close his eyes, because he has come to the same conclusion as she has.

Aldera looks to Y’shtola. “I have defeated two among the Lightwardens...”

“And she is but recently arrived in the First. I speaketh not in jest, as you well know, Master Matoya.”

-

When Y’shtola goes after Thancred and Minfilia in turn, speaking her mind as she is wont to do, it both crushes and relieves Aldera—that at least  _ someone  _ is willing to do it, unhampered by their own complicated emotions. Thancred storms out of the room; Y’shtola sees Minfilia into her study, then turns to Aldera with crossed arms. “And you.”

Aldera holds a hand up. “Please do not make me cry.”

“I cannot promise that,” Y’shtola says. “Take off your helmet.”

“No,” Aldera says.

Y’shtola stares at her with her sightless gaze. “Then I shall be forced to make certain assumptions about your state of being and act accordingly. Are you prepared for the consequences of such?”

“I would much rather talk about something that is not me,” Aldera says, taking a step back. “Please, Y’shtola. I am barely holding on. Every day I hold off on the urge to beat sense into Thancred until he does what is right without convincing a young girl that she is a burden to him. I want him to find his peace, but not like this. Do you know what she spoke of to me? Not that you did not immediately surmise it—but he is her whole world, and she would sacrifice all for him simply because she can sense his longing for the Minfilia of eld. Because she can tell that he holds himself apart from her because she is not that Minfilia. It is driving me mad.”

Y’shtola sighs. “All of that is worth your concern, and mine as well for how familiar a chord it rings within your own voice, and we may speak of it—just as soon as you take that helmet off.”

“You cannot see it. What does it matter?” she asks—and she makes the fatal mistake: fear has leaked into her voice. 

Her clever friend seizes on it. “Your armor is suffused with your own inner darkness, Aldera, and yet it does little to blunt the sheer intensity of the light within you. I may better measure what is happening within you if there is a point of uninhibited access so that we may see precisely how drastic the difference is.”

“...Neither of you can tell the others. Any of them. Please,” Aldera says, closing her eyes. “Agree to that and I shall do as you ask.”

“Very well. They shall not learn of it from me,” Y’shtola says. She looks to Urianger, who nods reluctantly, but he nods all the same.

Aldera sucks in a shaky breath. “Okay. Okay.”

With unsteady hands she undoes the latch, lifts the visor, then takes the whole thing off, holding it in her hands. Urianger’s eyes widen as he takes in the way the Lightwarden aether has set her hair and eyes and tattoos aglow; it is one thing to hear her all but admit it, and another to see it happening to her in real time. Y’shtola examines her in silence.

“From the very first one, I sensed something in me change,” Aldera says into that quiet. “I could not tell what it was. My studies were based on Allag’s ancient summoners, not aetherochemistry. But I know as well as you that aether, like matter, does not simply dissipate. It all has to go somewhere. And... and I think it may be taking root inside me. It would explain why you did not recognize me. With the aether of one, this was indistinct. With the aether of two—it seems there is an exponential increase. And for what it is worth I do not trust the Exarch either... but I do not know how else to save two worlds.”

“Aldera,” Y’shtola murmurs.

That softness bodes ill in a woman like Y’shtola. Aldera shakes her head. “I only ask what I have already asked of Urianger: pray keep watch on me. If I fail—too much is at stake for things to end. I will do what I may, of course, but...”

“But you wonder how far a soul can go ere it disintegrates under a burden such as this,” Y’shtola says. 

Aldera nods. “...Yes. And I would not see little Minfilia forced to do this—nor anyone else. I would see her live, and grow, that she might come to realize it is her life she bears responsibility for, and none other.”

“You care so for her?”

“I fear for her,” Aldera corrects, quiet. “I do care for her. Perhaps I see too much of myself in her.”

“Desperate to please everyone, but particularly Thancred,” Y’shtola concludes.

She hunches in on herself.  _ “Gods, _ Y’shtola, did you have to put it like that?”

“Not at all. I simply spoke as per my perception of the situation.” She pauses and shakes her head. “...I’m turning into her. Regardless, Aldera, it is beyond even you to force either of them to a realization. Though Thancred holds you dear in his heart—”

“I know—I  _ know— _ don’t say anything else. I know it isn’t me. I know it never was,” Aldera cuts in, squeezing her eyes shut, wrapping her arms around herself. “I know. Pray say no more on it.”

Y’shtola and Urianger both look at her for a long moment. She cannot identify the expressions on their faces and she does not want to.

“If you will watch after me then I am satisfied. Let us speak of something else. You suggested a tour through the city?” she asks, putting her helmet back on. She pushes it all down and away until her breathing is even again and she has returned to that careful numbness which she has struggled to maintain in recent days.

-

“You did well. Here—for your injuries,” Aldera says, handing Minfilia a potion.

“Thancred always said you were a woman of many talents,” Minfilia says thoughtfully after drinking the whole thing down. “I... I think I’m beginning to see what he meant. I have so much to learn if I’m to be half the hero you are.”

Aldera breathes in.  _ I will not kill him. I will not kill him. I will not kill him— _

“...The hero she was,” her young charge mumbles.

_ I am going to  _ kill  _ him. _

-

She keeps to herself when they return from retrieving the heartstone. She knows what she had resolved to do—but seeing Thancred makes her heart sad. No doubt Emet-Selch is around somewhere chortling over her inability to properly confront him. _ Entanglements,  _ he had said, as if it were some petty thing. Bother him. Thancred... well, Thancred is currently preoccupied. Doubtless he and Minfilia slipping away into their own little world in the small moments they have on the road has not escaped his notice. Likely it only contributes to his disquiet.

_ This is pathetic,  _ she thinks, returning her attention to the pile of laundry she volunteered to help carry into one of the rooms.  _ I want him to be happy. I want them to be happy. _

By the time she has carried the laundry into the cave with the natural spring, helped get the washing started, and come back out again, Runar hails her over and bids her gather her companions to attend the ceremony for the little one who died. Unfortunately for her, the nearest two are Thancred and Minfilia. Every step she takes closer to them is an act of willpower.  _ Get it over with, get it over with... _

Miraculously, he isn’t angry with Minfilia—since Aldera was with her. 

Never stops being useful, does it, being the Warrior.

Their business, whatever it is, is undone. Aldera pats Minfilia on the shoulder and makes her silent way to the Darkest.

_...I can set you free,  _ whispers Fray’s memory.  _ Just say the word, and we shall leave these lands... _

If only.

-

Y’shtola draws him aside a few minutes into walking the road. Aldera has gone on ahead—doubtless in pursuit of some aether current along the way—and their path is, for the moment, clear. Thancred waits with crossed arms as Y’shtola takes a minute to gather herself. 

“...I spoke out of concern for the girl earlier,” she says eventually. “I will not apologize for holding you to a higher standard, Thancred, as you have ever been possessed of considerable resolve, and strength of character besides. But I will apologize for ill choosing the time and place in which to voice my thoughts.”

Thancred’s lips thin. “Fine way to demonstrate that concern by making her feel worse than she already does.”

“So you do know of her internal struggle. I—no. Never mind. I would bring another matter to your attention, then, duly related as it is.” Y’shtola crosses her arms in turn.

He holds a hand out. “If you’re about to tell me to fix what I broke with Aldera—don’t. She’ll hardly even speak to me.”

“And why is that?” she asks, intent.

Thancred falls silent.

“Do not think I failed to notice the way she stands between young Minfilia and all else,” Y’shtola says. “You are a rather intelligent man. I expect you know what drives this behavior of hers.”

“...Mayhap,” he grinds out.

His old friend, though he’s rather regretting that truth about now, is peering at him, and it rather feels like she is peering into his soul. “Have you not even attempted to speak with her?”

“How  _ could  _ I?” Thancred finally bursts out, pacing in a small circle. “I can tell she is afraid—of how things stand, of the time that has passed, of the ways in which I have changed. But she will speak to no one of whatever it is that troubles her. She wears that helmet when she  _ sleeps,  _ Y’shtola. I haven’t seen her face since her arrival. She is playing the role of the Warrior to the hilt—a show for no one, considering we are all her friends. And, as you so delicately put it, I am otherwise engaged with particular ‘struggles’. Struggles she has taken poorly, to say the least.”

“Well, one of your frustrations may be put to rest. She has spoken to me.” Y’shtola leans on her staff. She looks remarkably like her master. He does not tell her that. “Her confidence is not mine to betray, but if you would see that which has been broken mended, start sooner rather than later. Such is my recommendation.”

“It’s not that easy,” he argues.

She tilts her head. “And why not?”

“You know why.” Thancred turns away, useless though the gesture is when arguing with a blind woman. Part of him already knows there is merit in Y’shtola’s wisdom, as there always is, but the larger part just—he needs time. “...And we ought to be getting on. She will be waiting for us.”

-

“Aldera,” Thancred says before they step back into Slitherbough. “A moment.”

Aldera stills. Y’shtola listens as their friend carefully regulates every small motion. “Several people in the village are waiting on the confirmation of tasks I have completed. I ought to be getting on.”

“I am sure Runar would enjoy tending to his flock by doing so for you,” Y’shtola says.

Aldera takes a step back. “I ought to do it myself, but thank you.”

“Aldera,” Thancred says again, quieter this time. “Please.”

She looks between them for a long moment. When she speaks again, there is a ragged undercurrent to her voice that was not there before. “Must we.”

“We have put it off overlong,” he says. He closes his eyes. “And I... I miss you.”

Aldera’s breathing is harsh through her helmet. She stands there, her hands fisted at her sides, struggling against tears if the way her chest heaves is any indication, and Y’shtola mentally bids her have courage. 

“Okay,” she whispers. “But not here.”

Y’shtola steps into the tunnel leading to Slitherbough and turns to go. But before she does, she looks at Thancred over her shoulder. “There is a quiet spot on the shore of Lake Tusi Mek’ta in the shadow of a tall cliff nearby. I go there on occasion to think on my work. It is well-suited to a lack of interruption.”

Thancred nods. She mentally bids him have courage, too. There is much he must reckon with—none the least what Aldera believes of where his affections lie. He is a good man, whether he believes himself to be or not, but his inner conflict is not tearing him alone apart.

They both have storms to contend with, he and Aldera. Better that they weather them together.

-

The lake is still and silent. Aldera looks over it, equally as silent, thinking on such shores as she has seen in the past. The First is just different enough to set her instincts for what is safe to swim and what is not just slightly off. Ordinarily she would not chance the deep green here. In the uncharted seas of the Source, such places on the isles there have all too frequently seen a man drown, pulled in by a current beneath the water and spun about until he cannot think straight—by simple physics if not by the creatures that live within. 

She has seen much. The fae folk of Il Mheg did not alarum her for their capricious nature; as would any sane person be, she was cautious, but such beings have long been known to her, as they are to many pirates. Her fondness for Feo Ul was initially borne of that familiarity. Most pirates, being among the most superstitious to be found in the realm, fear the folk like none other. Not Aldera, though before Feo Ul she had not chanced on the opportunity to befriend one in truth.

“...So,” Thancred says, his eyes fixed on a large tree root stretched out across the lake.

Aldera waits. Best to let him speak.

“Perhaps I ought to begin by offering you an apology.” He shifts his legs—a restless, uneasy motion—and slings one arm over his knee. “I am given to understand that the way in which I was pulled here was—distressing.”

“I punched the Exarch. I will do it again should he present reason to,” Aldera murmurs.

Thancred sighs. “Pray do no permanent harm—we have a star to save. But that is beside the point. You are upset with me.”

“...Yes,” she says, reluctant.

His other hand tightens in the fabric of his pants. “You disapprove,” he says, “of my treatment of Minfilia.”

“Yes,” she whispers.

He closes his eyes. “I have no intent or desire to harm her.”

_ “That’s not the—” _ Aldera starts to snarl, dark tendrils leaping to the forefront, and she clutches at her horns as she pushes Fray back down and exhales through her nose, clenching her eyes shut. “Thancred—she is a child. A  _ child. _ A child to whom  _ you _ are the whole world, beginning and end. You are a father. Congratulations.”

Thancred is silent. 

_ This is going great!  _ Fray exclaims, sardonic.  _ Bravo, Aldera, bravo. Excellent work. Now let me rend him limb to limb— _

“Shut up, Fray,” she hisses. She ignores Thancred’s sharp glance in her direction. “I—listen, I—my father died. But I knew him before that. To make a choice that would have displeased him was more than the girl I was could bear. Be good to her. And that is  _ all  _ I will say on the matter because you are not going to listen and I do not like to waste my time.”

“...That’s all, is it?” Thancred asks, his tone a careful neutral.

Aldera looks up at him, Fray seething inside, and his eyes widen. She wonders if he sees the red. If she is that far gone. “More involves physical violence. We are here to talk.”

“Point taken,” he says. “Fray is still present?”

“Fray did not leave. He is a part of me,” Aldera says.

Thancred huffs. “And may I ask how many hangers-on are bouncing about in that skull of yours nowadays?”

“That depends.” She frowns thoughtfully. “How far does the definition of ‘in my skull’ stretch?”

“Never mind. I fear knowing would be more distressing than not,” he deadpans.

A ghost of a smile finds its way to her lips. It vanishes just as quickly. She stares out over the lake, wishing her hands would stop trembling. “...I thought we had lost you, Thancred. A mere five moons have passed for me. But—five years—”

“It is a long while,” he acknowledges, quiet.

Her grip on herself tightens. “And—and much can change, in that time.”

She is not quite brave enough to say what needs to be said. Not when she already knows—the rejection is just—if she can just put it off as long as she can—

“It can,” he says. Pauses. “But some things have not.”

It takes an embarrassing amount of time for her mind to comprehend.  _ Thancred holds you dear in his heart,  _ Y’shtola had said before she cut her off, as if that much was plain fact. Aldera swallows. “Really?”

“I’m sure Minfilia has told you of what I spoke of to her about you,” he says, that reticent edge re-entering his tone.

Minfilia. She half-smiles at the thought of the girl—of her quiet eagerness to be in her company, and the shadow of the confident person that makes an appearance when she forgets herself and her worries in the moment. “She might’ve done, yes. A little bit.”

“...Like I said.” His eyes close. “I have missed you, Aldera. There have been a fair few times that waking from sleep was disappointing for the reminder of your absence.”

“I... I have missed you, too,” Aldera whispers.

Thancred looks to her and sucks in a breath. Slowly, the motion tentative, he extends his hand to her.

She tilts her head at him in silent question.

“You don’t have to,” he says, but she can see the longing in his eyes. “I only... well... think of it as something resembling a peace offering.”

Aldera does not act on her knee-jerk reaction—to take his hand immediately, to reassure, to cherish. Too much remains unaddressed to go to him without reserve. But—even if she does not know that she can fully believe him, or if he fully believes himself—she understands. He does not want them to be in conflict.

She takes his hand. He smiles, also a tentative, somber thing, and together they look out over the lake for some time.

-

“Urianger told me that Thancred was something of a rogue in the past,” Minfilia says, blinking. “’A wolf among sheep’, he said. What did he mean by that? Do you know?”

Aldera considers for a moment, mentally cursing Urianger as she is sure Thancred must also be doing. His eyes are on her—he knows well enough not to plead, though. Stupid dumb fool of a man. She crosses her arms. “Indeed I do. What Urianger meant is that Thancred toyed with the hearts of women on a routine basis. Perhaps you might find enlightenment in the tale of the time four such women came to call upon him at the same time—”

_ “Aldera,”  _ Thancred says, hiding his face in his hands.

Minfilia takes a large step backwards from him. “F-Four?!  _ Thancred?” _

“I have not done such things in years...” he mumbles weakly.

Their charge’s eyes are wide as dinner plates. “So you  _ did _ play with their hearts!”

“No, I—”

“That he did. A real rogue,” Aldera says.

Minfilia frowns. _ “...I’m  _ a rogue.”

Aldera pauses. Thancred looks at Minfilia through the gaps in his fingers.

“So, to be a real rogue... I have to seduce women?”

“I’m so glad you understand,” Aldera says at the same time as Thancred says, vehement, _ “No.” _

Minfilia looks between them—and then she laughs, real and true, absolutely, positively delighted with herself. “You took me seriously!”

“If you did happen to seduce women, there would be nothing wrong with that.” She pats Minfilia on the shoulder. “Women are, after all, very soft, and nice to look at.”

“Oh my gods,” Thancred mutters.

But Minfilia is smiling up at her, her eyes sparkling. “They are, aren’t they?”

“Positively lovely,” Aldera agrees.

Thancred holds his hands out. “First of all—Minfilia, you’ve seen but sixteen summers, focus on yourself first. Second of all...”

“Second of all?” Minfilia prompts when his eyes grow unfocused.

“...Nothing. No. You know what? Never mind.” He gives Aldera an exhausted look. “Thank you for sullying my reputation.”

“All is as it should be in the world,” Aldera replies, for the moment serene, and drifts off to the cookpot and the fire.

-

Aldera looks at Emet-Selch for a long moment.

“Go on,” he says, waving his hand at her. “Say what you want to say. I may even be gracious about it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Incredible. You just lost all chance of hearing what I was about to say.”

“I’m truly grieved. Just as you all were over the loss of a loved one.” He could not be more insincere if he tried—and that’s saying something.

Aldera tilts her head, studying him. He seems to be waiting for something, though what exactly is anyone’s guess. “Are your fellow Ascians your coworkers, or—”

“Oh, it’s dreadfully complicated. You wouldn’t be interested in the details.” Emet-Selch waves that off. “My patience is running out, my dear. Do try something more interesting—I have an awful lot of napping to get in.”

Truly, really, deeply... annoying. “Is there a reason you keep antagonizing Thancred?”

“Is that his name? Really! I hadn’t the slightest. As it happens, yes. The answer is that it amuses me.” He smiles at her. She resists the urge to shudder.

Aldera crosses her arms. “Should I be making a list of questions?”

“I’d be honored that you put that much thought into little old me,” is the glib response.

She twitches. “I won’t, then. You restored Y’shtola’s clothing—”

_ “Boooooooring,” _ he says, miming falling asleep. “If you  _ must _ know, it only seemed proper. We Ascians  _ are  _ aware of such things. And it completed the touching moment—without making it awkward, what with the affection that priest has for her. Ah, I do so enjoy a touching love story.”

“Every other thing you say sets off my kill sensors,” Aldera mutters.

He laughs heartily at that. “Only every other thing? Why, I’m slacking on my job, if that’s the case. Still, hero, I must ask you to refrain from indulging such desires. It would be a shame if my shows of friendship were to come to naught—even if, in the wake of this one, your friends shall soon remember their differences and return to squabbling.”

“Am I truly hearing this from the mouth of the arch Bringer of Chaos?” she asks incredulously.

Again laughter, and begrudgingly, she acknowledges to herself that whatever else, he has a nice laugh. “Flattery will get you nowhere, my dear.”

“Right, the sword is coming out—”

“But seriously,” Emet-Selch says, levity leaving his face so quickly it takes her a tad aback, “we Ascians do what we do for the greater good. For the Rejoining. Though we may sow the seeds of chaos, it is man who tends them, and he who reaps their bountiful harvest.”

Igeorhyim and Lahabrea had been the ones to entreat Thordan to the path he took, she remembers. Even if he had turned it to his own ends as she is sure few other pawns of them do, would he have become intent on godhood without them? There is much that is lost to time and memory—even beyond Thordan VII, she wonders if in that time of eld, they had had a hand in the murder of Ratatoskr. In the beginning of the Dragonsong. If only she had the records on hand—but she does not. But if that sea of blood was, in part, partially caused by them...

Emet-Selch clears his throat. “I see that you’re thinking.”

“What is the greater good?” she asks him.

He blinks, then tilts his head and smiles, slow and testing. “What indeed.”

“...And here my patience runs thin. I’m heading back,” Aldera says, turning and hastening to where Thancred is waiting with crossed arms. Emet-Selch watches her go, his gaze thoughtful, and she is sure he does not miss the careful way in which Thancred silently positions himself at her back.

-

Y’shtola hurries her into her quarters as soon as they have a spare moment to slip away unnoticed. She turns to Aldera, and before the words even leave her lips, Aldera gamely does as she is instructed and removes the helmet. That Y’shtola’s eyes widen as she takes in the aether suffusing her is no surprise. The worry and fear, though, displayed openly on stalwart Y’shtola’s face...

“Is it that bad?” Aldera asks, gentle.

Y’shtola shakes herself. “Not yet—but you know as well as I that the danger to you grows greater with every Warden slain. You are hereby required to inform me should you feel anything strange. Anything at all. And if it is your desire to continue to hide this... mm. I understand your concerns, given how each of our companions stand, but will you not consider revealing it to them? The longer you do so, the more difficult it will be should the choice be taken away from you.”

“Alphinaud and Alisaie would be distracted beyond measure,” Aldera says, shaking her head, “and Thancred would withdraw from us all in upset, which would make Minfilia all the more anxious for how attuned she is to his emotions. I would not see them all suffer so over this when so much remains to be done. I may be afraid, but I will continue to do my duty. I chose this fight long ago not for Hydaelyn’s sake, but for that of humanity’s. For the memory of those who loved me. To help those in need, as would my dear Haurchefant.”

Her friend’s face softens. “You mourn him still?”

“I will always miss him,” she says after a moment of thought. She turns to Y’shtola’s books, tidying the crooked ones and busying herself with organizing them to Y’shtola’s preferred specifications. “But wallowing in grief would serve me ill when I needs must be the hero he dreamed of. I would see the future saved.”

“That is not entirely what I asked, dear one,” says Y’shtola with some wry amusement, shaking her head.

Aldera smiles, bittersweet. “It is... less near to me than the grief of some. Here—let me put my helmet back on before I am seen.”

-

“Aldera? Are you in?”

Thancred. She blinks, sandwich halfway to her mouth, and looks to Feo Ul—also munching on a bit of sandwich, apparently out of curiosity—in silent panic. They pat her head. “Very well, loveliest of saplings. I will expect your most thrilling tale in return once you are done.”

_ Thank you, _ Aldera mouths fervently as Feo Ul casts a glamour on her and the light radiating off her hair fades from the corners of her vision. She clears her throat and raises her voice. “I am. Come in.”

The door opens, and Thancred walks in, dressed down in a sleeveless shirt he has tucked into his sarouel. He stops dead when he realizes her helmet is off—his eyes scan her with a surprise and a hunger that fills her with warmth. She hadn’t seen the need to wear much more than her sleep attire after Ardbert departed to wander the Crystarium and see what there was to see—she suspects he’s grown fond of the people of the city—as the only other visitor she was expecting was Feo Ul, who is not so much a visitor as they are a constant.

“Hi,” she says, and takes a bite of her sandwich.

He gestures vaguely at her head. “Your helmet...”

“It has some scratches. Need to attend to it,” she says between mouthfuls. She waves him over, since the chair Feo Ul had ‘claimed’ (despite just hovering over it) is now free, and gestures to the sandwich basket. “If you want any, go ahead—”

“I daren’t deny you the fruits of your labors when I just watched you consume that sandwich in three bites,” he says, amused, pulling his seat up close to her.

Aldera swallows the last of it and takes a hearty sip of the fruity tea that was set out beside it. “Have you eaten already, then?”

His eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles and nods. This close, she can see the faint lines beginning to form on his face, as well as she can see the tired bags beneath his eyes. He wears age well—even if the aging is untimely. He watches her watch him. Carefully, tentatively, she reaches out and cups his face with her hand. It is with an immediacy that he leans into her touch, a soft, semi-conscious sigh escaping his lips, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment.

“You all keep dismissing me to my rest,” she says with quiet amusement, and his eyes flicker open to watch her lips move. “I hardly know how to take it after leaping from one battlefield to the next. What am I to do with all these bells?”

Thancred looks at her with a dryness in his expression. “If you don’t know the answer to that, then perhaps we ought to send you to your rest more often.”

“If you do that, I shall be forced to find some way to occupy myself. Like, say, resuming my exploration of all dishes strange and bizarre—”

“Oh, no. Not after that unholy concoction you made in Il Mheg,” he says quickly. 

She grins. “Feo Ul helped with that.”

“I should have known.” Where normally he would initiate touch, he hesitates, his hand landing on his knee instead. He looks to her. “May I—?”

He wants to touch her. He  _ still _ wants to touch her.

Aldera considers, brushing her thumb over his face as she does, her tail curling over her bare leg. There is a difference between what she wants and what she can handle—and she knows very well what she wants, because he is beautiful in the soft lamplight, because the prospect of draping herself across him and playing with the hairs on the back of his neck is still ridiculously appealing for all that what she saw in that vision still gives her pause. But it would not be kind to herself to give in to the urge to pretend that all is as it was before.

There is no going back from what he has lived. From what she saw. Now there is only the path forward.

And while it is clouded as it is, caution is the better part of valour.

Instead she stands, pulling him along with her, and settles on the couch. He lets her push him about until he is arranged on it to her satisfaction and she has curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder.

“There,” she says, watching the night sky out her window.

He sighs, a little, wistful sigh, and leans his head atop hers. “...Forgive my hesitance. I thought it best that you take the lead in this matter.”

“It is appreciated,” she assures him quietly.

-

Aldera skids to a stop in front of Thancred and nearly trips on herself—rights herself just in time. Chest heaving, she looks him over. There’s exhaustion—expected—and he holds himself gingerly—also expected, though he’s doing his level best to hide it. She exhales. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“Such drama,” Thancred replies with a ghost of a smile. “I am entirely well, I assure you. The healers here have done wonders.”

She nods. But looking around, she does not see his ever-present shadow. “And Minfilia—?”

“She did not take it... particularly well,” he admits with a wince.

Aldera takes a moment to force a steady breath. Her heart is hammering in her chest. “She herself is alright?”

“Only some minor injuries.” He looks away, and they are silent for a long moment as he wrestles with himself. “...But she is remarkably upset. Might I ask you to speak with her? My attempts to reach out seem to have had the opposite effect.”

_ Thancred... _

It’s not that she doesn’t understand, given the circumstances. But—

“Please. I wouldn’t ask another,” he says quietly. 

Aldera stands and squeezes his shoulder. “Of course I will. Where has she gone?”

-

“...Love?” Emet-Selch proposes, silky, and Aldera feels flash-frozen again—blinding fury and despairing anguish howling as it comes back to the fore, as the truth is once more shoved in her face with no recourse or dignity left to her.  _ Not her not her not her— _

But she cannot move. She cannot snatch the young Minfilia up and spirit her away until she sees sense, and she cannot countenance Thancred—any of it—any of him.

And of course her turmoil has not escaped Emet-Selch. His old and eternal gaze shifts to her. “...And  _ you.” _

_ No no no no no no no— _

“Mourning a dead man for years on end while loving a man who might as well be dead. A man who can’t love you, and yet you sacrifice yourself for him regardless, just as the girl would if she lived what you are living. What a twisted little family this is,” he muses. “All three of you keeping secrets from each other—presuming to know what the other wants. Frankly, I think you deserve each other—and I also think the young lady’s suggestion is a fair sight better than anything the rest of you have managed to do. To Amh Araeng it is, then.”

Aldera sees red. Aldera  _ is _ red. In the blink of an eye she moves, darkness seething about her, and she throws Emet-Selch into the wall with an enraged scream, drawing shouts of surprise and alarum from her friends. He connects with a satisfying _ thunk  _ and slumps—she punches him in the jaw and the head several times with a seething, savage rage before he can recover—and then she is out the door and running, running, running, directly through the Crystarium and out its gates, Fray howling in her head as another storm darkens the horizon.

-

When she comes back to herself she is collapsed on her knees on the lakeshore.

There is a trail of devastation in her wake—devastation for the local wildlife, at any rate. She is quite alone. Night has fallen. The rain is soft. The settlements on either side of the lake are far from her central location.

Aldera puts her head in her hands and screams, piercingly loud and shrill, a wordless agony burning her from the inside out.

“Shhh,” a voice soothes, and strong arms are pulling her into their embrace, holding firm when she struggles, tears falling from her face and staining her collar. “Aldera, hush. I’m here. I’m here.”

Ardbert.

“She wants to  _ die _ for him,” Aldera screams, and his grip tightens. “She is a _ child _ and she wants to  _ die for him  _ and he’s going to  _ let her _ because he  _ loves Minfilia  _ and  _ not me _ and I want to be dead, I want to be  _ dead, I—” _

“Shhh.” At some point in her blind rage she lost her helmet. Ardbert’s fingers card through her glowing hair—and a flash of memory comes to her. Maman, playing with Yasu’s long hair, a soft smile on her face.

Aldera sobs. “I—I—”

“It’s alright,” Ardbert is whispering.

_ “I want my Maman back!” _ she shrieks, utterly beyond herself, utterly unbefitting of her twenty-two years. “I want her back I want her back I want her  _ back! Why did she leave me?!” _

She loses coherence after that. Ardbert continues to hold her, murmuring nonsense words in a soothing tone, long after she has slumped into his arms and her chest has stopped violently trying to wrest itself from her skin—long after she can cry no longer and she stares with dead eyes into the lake and its murky waters.

“Your helmet’s not far,” Ardbert murmurs. “It’s just over there by that tree. You’ll want to retrieve it ‘fore you return, won’t you? I took the liberty of listening in on your friends. They split up into groups and went off to prepare—one to the west road to make for Nabaath Areng, and the other to the east, to create a distraction. Eulmore’s on the prowl, see. The girl... is determined to see her course through. I know you’ll go to them no matter how you feel, but the helmet’ll make it easier.”

Aldera closes her eyes.

“Or do you want to stay here a while longer?”

She nods.

“You’ll hear no objections from me.”

-

Ardbert does not leave her for a moment—not as she gathers herself, not as she calls upon the least-remarkable mount she owns (her chocobo), and not as she flies to Amh Araeng and the Hills of Amber, intent on clearing the way. He does not try to stay her from her chosen course. She is grateful for that. 

Minfilia must make her own choice. She  _ must. _ No matter what any of them might want for her.

But she can ill contend with that, not when the girl found her way into Aldera’s heart so easily. 

Not—not when—

Not when Aldera is all that remains, in the end. And not when she can feel the Light in her seeping like a poison. Not when she can feel the slow corruption of her aether... and of her body.

Her scales have begun to glow. She does not know how long she can contain it.

Aldera is running on borrowed time, and she knows it.

So it is that her patience with the villagers of the Twine runs thin as they dither and equivocate on the matter of the trolley and its repair. She grits her teeth while Ardbert lays a quelling hand on her shoulder—’tis like that she scares the boy, Jeryk, half to death with her irritation, but he leads her to the talos anyways. Her oft-neglected (these days, at least) studies of summoning come in handy... up to a point. A point at which she can determine that the years of disuse and disrepair have damaged the aetheric pathways of the talos, which much resemble that of golems on the Source, but a point beyond which she has no idea what to do.

Egis and carbuncles have pathways of their own, but they are pure aether. She and Y’mhitra hadn’t had enough time during that escapade at Azys Lla to properly decipher what Master Sari had done to turn them into aetherochemical creations.

And this is when she hears three sets of footsteps—one as familiar to her as her own. She closes her eyes.

“A knight dressed head to toe in black,” says Thancred behind her. “Yes, I would say we’ve found our mark. So this is where you went.”

Jeryk looks at her nervously. Aldera does not respond.

More footsteps—and then Minfilia is kneeling beside her, taking one of her hands in her own. “Aldera, I... I’m glad to see you safe. I was worried. We all were.”

How can she  _ possibly— _

“I take it from thy stance that thou wert attempting to discern the manner of affliction that hath befallen this talos,” Urianger says, thank the bloody Twelve. “Didst thou find aught to suggest the nature of its malady?”

Aldera shakes her head.

“Then I shall attempt it myself. Pray step back, dear friend.”

-

“Aldera,” Urianger says.

She takes a step back.

He regards her with sympathy, but he shakes his head all the same. “Go to him. You are both sorely in need of a task to do and a moment away—and lest you forget, we are in dire need of transport to Nabaath Areng.”

“Urianger, please,” Aldera murmurs.

Another shake of the head. “...I had too little time with my dear Moenbryda, though we spent our entire childhoods together. ‘Tis plain to see that the Ascian’s words hit their mark—a keen discerner of the heart is he, and keener still in the art of playing to beliefs already held. But there was one thing that he, in speaking, did spark awareness of in all three of you. One which Thancred and Minfilia have been thinking on ere our departure, and one which they think on even now.”

Aldera stares very intently at her feet.

“You  _ are _ a family,” says Urianger. “A family within a family. Not twisted, nor maleficent, as the Ascian would haveth thee believe, but one with troubles magnified by the path we do so necessarily walk. That thou art troubled by things yet unresolved doth not preclude thee from being numbered along ours. ...Nor doth it preclude Thancred, troubled though he is.”

She closes her eyes. “I will go. If we level the mines, I shall blame it on you.”

“Gladly shall I bear such, if indeed that is what it takes.”

-

They regard each other in silence.

Ardbert is steady at her side—his arms are crossed, though, as he looks on Thancred. “You know, I thought him the repressed, dramatic type from the first. Come on—a bloody eyepatch that he doesn’t need? What a fancy arsehole. He’s only kept on proving me right.”

Aldera snorts, putting her head in her hand, and then she pauses as Thancred looks at her with raised brows. “...Don’t ask.”

“Fray?” he asks anyways.

“I’ve more than one ghost,” she mutters. Thancred looks torn between curiosity, concern, and a healthy apprehension. “But... Urianger has a task for us. We’ve a lead on the stone.”

He blinks. “Really now? I can’t very well have you go on your own, then. Lead the way.”

So she does. And his behavior positively _ baffles _ her.

Trouble still lingers in his eyes—but she has the sneaking suspicion that he came to an accord within himself sometime between the bared knives Emet-Selch seems to think of as nice conversation starters and his, Minfilia’s, and Urianger’s arrival at the Twine. Unless he just feels sorry for her poor, deluded, sea-addled self, but... he wouldn’t suffer that now that the truth is clear. 

Besides, his touch lingers as it did in the time before, and when this so distracts her that she misses the medium-sized rock on the path and trips over it, he catches her around the waist with a knowing look in his eyes.

“Alright there?” he asks, altogether too calm. And not in the way she hits the point of blankness when she is too far gone—it is actual calm, and not her dissonant serenity.

There is still pain. There is not as much disquiet as there was before.

And he... he isn’t letting go. His hands are lingering on her waist, even after setting her aright. “What... what is...”

“For now we ought to be getting on,” he tells her, “but when we have a moment—we should talk.”

She laughs a weak laugh as he steps back and his hands drop to his side. “Those words are beginning to inspire the fear of the gods in me.”

“It’s nothing terrible, I promise you.”

“That only makes it worse.”

He shrugs. “I do believe patience is a virtue...”

“And I start campfires with cantrips,” she says flatly, startling laughter out of him. That laughter—gods. Gods, she hasn’t heard him laugh in so, so long.

It’s... good. It is. It  _ is  _ good.

-

“Go to her,” Aldera says, quiet, as Minfilia looks up at Urianger with hope and desolation warring in her eyes. It has been a long day for them all, and Aldera well remembers how taxing being a teenage girl was—how much harder that must make the poor darling’s internal conflict for herself.

But Thancred only closes his eyes. “Not today.”

“Then come with me,” she says, and as the light above waxes, casting brighter patches on random spots of rugged red earth, he follows her onto the tracks and further still to a rocky outcropping upon which it partially rests. She sits; he stretches his legs out beside her. “You... wanted to talk?”

“Some of it I did manage to impart to you while we were at the mines. Minfilia. Her past. The nature of our relationship, such as it was.”

Aldera stills. Then—

Thancred watches her. “What Emet-Selch said to you...”

“Ascians lie,” she says, her voice hitching.

He hums. “Did he lie, or did he speak the truth—as you see it?”

She keeps silent.

“Either he is a very good guesser, or in the course of your little game of exchanging pieces of information, he has managed to see that which you have been at pains to keep hidden. Unfortunately for us, he seems the type that doesn’t lie directly. Infuriating, I know,” Thancred says, watching a few buzzards flying overhead toward some other end. “...Regardless, he has had a vested interest in you, particularly, from the start. I should not be surprised if he did what he did merely to see how you would react.”

“I hope I did significant harm,” she says in a low voice, glaring into the middle distance.

Thancred nods. “A woman after my own heart.”

Her head snaps toward him so fast she nearly gets whiplash.

“I have much to make amends for,” he says with a wry smile. One that quickly fades as he grows more somber than he already was. “Allowing you to think I do not— _ cannot— _ love you is—one among many. But I would begin to rectify that—if you will allow it.”

“You—what?” Aldera blinks. “What—but—”

Thancred takes her hand. Even though they’re both wearing gloves, she can feel the heat of him in his touch. “Do you remember when you dragged me to Costa del Sol for a fortnight?”

“I do,” she says. “You had a beard. Have a beard, still. You should keep it, by the way. It looks good.”

_ “Really  _ now—hey, stop distracting me,” he says, wiggling the index finger of his free hand at her. “I’m going somewhere with this. More time may have passed for me, but I distinctly recall telling you that I really ought to have known of my affections for you sooner than I did. I have since been informed by a little bird that our Minfilia made a bet with Urianger that very first day that you joined the Scions as to how long it would take us to realize our mutual interest.”

Aldera blinks, blinks again, and hides her face in her hands, ignoring that she still has the helmet on.  _ “Minfilia...  _ of course she did. I was—very flustered by the attention you paid to me. Men and women do not generally... that is to say, I was a strange thing, even for pirates—shellshocked and rendered mute by a past I could not remember, most thought me touched in the head. But you did not treat me as such. I suppose she saw that I was rather... that I...”

“You were infatuated with me,” he supplies. She is going to die of embarrassment before she dies of Lightwarden aether.

After a  _ very  _ long moment, she nods, just the barest incline of her head.

“My interest only grew with all that happened after that. It was you checking on me after the Praetorium that did me in,” he admits quietly. “I have loved you for a long while. That has not ceased, nor ebbed, but as you well know, I am a fool of a man. Instead of confronting my failure—instead of taking responsibility and playing an active role in Minfilia’s life—I spent a decade searching for solace in the bottom of a bottle. ...So it was with my feelings for you.”

“Thancred...”

He shakes his head. “I say this not for pity, but that you might fully understand. I love you. I have loved you for years. But I have done you wrong, and caused you no small amount of pain. You deserve far better than me. If you wish to seek that out, I would support you however I may.”

This man.

How nobly he speaks now that he is resolved within himself to do what must be done—if she has the right of it, to truly allow little Minfilia to make her own choice. She wonders if he knows his voice has a tremor in it. He  _ wants, _ even as he is trying to do what is right for its own sake.

If he is gearing up to try to set her and Minfilia both free from him, she will kill him herself.

Aldera wonders at how easily she comes to her decision now that his side of things has been laid out. She reaches up and does the familiar motions needed to remove her helmet while accommodating for her horns and sets it on her lap. He draws in a sharp, quiet breath as he looks upon her without Feo Ul’s glamour—at her glowing hair, her scales, her tattoos, her eyes.

“We are both fools,” she says, “who run from our problems at the slightest provocation.”

He squeezes her hand. “What Emet-Selch did was not  _ slight  _ provocation.”

“No. But after the storm came clarity. As I suspect it also came for you. We cannot continue to run thinking only of ourselves—you have a legacy to protect, and I a duty to fulfill.” She takes a moment to close her eyes and feel the wind on her face. “...I was afraid that if I revealed the impact absorbing the aether of each Warden was having on me, it would drive Minfilia to a hasty decision. She cannot help but love deeply, and say little of it. Much like you. Much like me.”

His breath catches.

“...How could I not love her? How could I not love you?” There are tears in her eyes. “I had no certainty as to what my place was in all of this. I thought—I thought a grave and my duty could be enough, willed it to be so, but they are not. I miss Haurchefant—but I love  _ you. _ Foolish as you may be, and as many amends as you have to make, I would have no other fool.”

“Oh, darling,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion, pulling her sideways into his arms. She only barely manages to maneuver her helmet onto the rocky ground next to him before he is crushing her to him with an arm around the small of her back, cradling her face and kissing her with all the pent-up intensity of years spent waiting for a shadow of hope—years spent waiting for  _ her. _

His lips, his mouth, his touch—she feels it all, feels him, with a keen intensity. Above the Light beats down, and the sun burns somewhere beyond it; around them is the lonely air of the Hills of Amber, whispering of glories past and secrets forgotten into their exposed skin, and below is red earth and pale sand, simmering with the day’s retained heat. When Aldera pulls back he follows her with a half-conscious noise of want, and she laughs a little, pushing his hair back from his eyes and leaning her forehead against his.

Gods, but he is beautiful.

“We should get back before it gets to be too late,” she says eventually. “I do rather like the helmet. It keeps the sand out of my eyes. But come what may after this, I shall be taking it off for a time.”

Thancred smiles. She wants to kiss him again. “You hate having your head covered.”

“I hate it less than being gawked at, truth be told.”

Despite needing to get up, though, neither of them move.

“...You’ll speak to Minfilia?” Aldera asks.

He nods. “When the time is right. She deserves that. I... I only want what is best for her.”

“I know—and she will too, soon. I’m trusting you.”

Thancred makes an acknowledging noise and buries his face in her neck. They stay there for a little while longer. Just a little while.

-

Thancred looks at her over his shoulder—and Aldera knows.

She was right. That calm was what she thought it was.

“Die and I send my ghosts to haunt you,” Aldera says to him, taking Minfilia’s hand. “I am not finished with you yet.”

He smiles. One last smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”

Minfilia is the one who starts to run. Aldera sprints with her. There is too much at stake to stay.

-

“...You don’t think Thancred will be angry with me, do you?” 

Aldera pauses. Before Minfilia can take her silence the wrong way, she undoes her helmet and lifts it off her head. Minfilia’s eyes widen as she takes her in; Aldera smiles wryly. “No more than he may be angry with me. And that is not a great deal—especially not after his little show back there. In fact, I rather think I am angrier with him than he shall ever truly be with you... you really ought to talk to him... Minfilia?”

“Oh! Oh,” Minfilia says, flustered. “Pardon me. I-I’m sorry. It’s just—I never saw your face—you’re positively gorgeous!”

She blinks. Smiles. “Well—thank you. You are too. Shall we get going?”

“Actually... would you mind going on ahead? Just for a moment. I just need a moment to think,” says her charge.

Aldera squeezes her shoulder. “Ware the zonures, then. I shall see you shortly.”

-

“Ah, there you are,” Thancred says, as if he is not covered in blood and grime and dirt. Aldera crosses her arms, glaring at him. He smiles winningly at her. “We were worried.”

“I ought to kill you myself, you dumb motherfucker. Did you think you were fooling me?” she asks with an arched brow and an even more arch tone, taking all but Y’shtola and Thancred aback.

He chuckles. Painfully. “I don’t think I can answer that, legally speaking.”

“Aldera!” Alphinaud exclaims, more out of habit than anything. “Such language—”

She looks at him down the line of her nose. “If Thancred is a dumbarse it is my right to refer to him as such. Or shall I seek out more centipedes...”

“Centipedes, darling?” Thancred asks as Alphinaud takes a step back.

Alisaie takes a step forward. _ “Darling? _ And Aldera—what in the name of the gods have you done to your hair? And your eyes, for that matter... and your tattoos,  _ and _ your scales...”

“That can wait,” Aldera says, turning to follow the line of Thancred’s sight to where Minfilia stands, partially hidden behind the derelict wagon. “There you are, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”

“Sweetheart?” Alisaie mutters.

Minfilia tentatively joins them. “I feel okay...”

But it is plain to see she is apprehensive. Aldera watches on as Thancred gets to his feet with a gingerness and finally, finally speaks that which has long since needed to be spoken. Minfilia becomes Ryne—at long last herself.

Alisaie pokes her in the back. She blinks, looking to her, and is met with the sight of two raised brows and burning impatience on her friend’s face. “Would you like to explain why you seem more like a proud mother than anything else? And why your hair is glowing?”

“Well...” Aldera hedges, her face warming at Ryne’s shocked stare.

Thancred waves. “I can explain the first one. The second one will have to be all Aldera, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, come on—” Alisaie cuts herself off when Thancred turns to Aldera with a smirk and kisses her in full view of all of them—a polite, chaste kiss that Aldera is going to  _ kill him for. _ Later. When Alisaie isn’t grinning like a feral animal at being right and Ryne and Alphinaud aren’t flushing red with embarrassment and Y’shtola isn’t looking around them trying to figure out what’s happening and Urianger isn’t smiling like a sentimental old man watching his grandchildren at a ceremony of eternal bonding—

Thancred pulls away and smiles down at her, his eyes dancing. “I’d say that rather does the job, wouldn’t you?”

“You got blood in my mouth,” she complains, rummaging through her bag until she finds a spare, relatively clean cloth, then she promptly pulls him down by the collar to daub at his grimy face and at least wipe the blood away from his lips, the stupid fool. “I don’t like the taste of metal.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you later,” he promises.

_ “Last _ time you said that, you promptly went into a coma—”

Y’shtola looks around at all of them. “Can I assume by the sound of wet smacking and the conversation that they have finally deigned to formally inform the rest of us about that which we already knew?”

“Aye,” says Urianger, the only one  _ mature enough  _ to respond.

“Then I will expect my gil soon, Alisaie,” Y’shtola says, crossing her arms.

Alisaie sighs. “Oh, very well. Fair is fair, I suppose, and you  _ were  _ right.”

“That I was. I am glad you understand.”

-

Aldera absorbs the last of Storge’s aether and staggers. _ Oh, gods... _

“Aldera?” Ardbert asks, kneeling at her side. When he puts his hand on her shoulder, she feels a little better. Light sparks and zaps and—and it disappears, into him—he jolts, but shakes himself, looking her in the eye. “Steady there.”

She looks up at him, willing him to understand—to see, if only because no one else can, nor should they.

“Aldera—are you well?”

Thancred, warm at her side. She spares him a tight smile as he helps her up. “Well enough.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says, shaking his head. “What was that I saw for a moment there? I could have sworn—”

Aldera blinks. “You could—?  _ Huh.” _

“Don’t tell me. One of your ghosts?”

“The kelp ghost,” she says with a nod. Ardbert pinches the bridge of his nose.

Alphinaud steps forward and casts Physick on her—mostly, she suspects, as an excuse to frown at her. “You  _ were _ serious. I can hardly believe you.”

“I am always serious.” She smirks at the expression on his face. “And truly—I am fine, unlike this big lunk. Heal him up if you like.”

“I’m perfectly fine—” Thancred starts, then breaks off with a wince when she gently pokes him in the ribs. “Ugh.”

Alphinaud turns that frown on him. Ha. “Really, Thancred, you ought to have said something sooner. Now _ hold still.” _

-

Ryne and Y’shtola linger behind as everyone else begins to make their way back through the Well. 

“Aldera, do you feel anything different?” Y’shtola asks, one hand on Ryne’s shoulder.

After a moment of thought on how best to say it, Aldera reluctantly nods. “The aether seethes within me. I take it you can now sense it, Ryne?”

“I can,” Ryne says with a frown. “How long have you been containing this?”

“From the very first. I didn’t see any other way to subdue the Wardens—what’s wrong? Don’t feel bad, darling,” Aldera says, reaching out to cup Ryne’s regretful face and brush a quick thumb across the girl’s cheek. “This is a choice I made. A path I chose to walk. And I’ll be damned before I let a little aether kill me before I have done all that needs must be done.”

Ryne blinks back tears and shakes her head. “You sound every bit the hero you are.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that—oof!” She wheezes as Ryne embraces her and buries her face in Aldera’s scarf. “Oogh—you certainly did not skip out on our strength exercises—”

“I’ll help you however I can. I’ll find a way. I want to be here for you! Even though I can’t contain the Light forever, I can at least help you a little bit,” Ryne says, determined, and Aldera softens, returning the girl’s embrace as Y’shtola looks in their direction with a gentle smile. When Aldera looks up, she sees Thancred waiting at the hallowed cavern’s exit, a look of such warmth on his face that it takes her breath away.

_ Family,  _ Aldera thinks, burying her nose in Ryne’s hair.  _ Family such as I did not expect to find. Family that I would give my all to protect. _

It feels like—like—

“A home,” Ardbert murmurs, almost to himself, his tone dreamlike and wistful. He is thinking of his friends, then. “It need not be a place, after all.”

-

“Oh, do not look at me so,” says Emet-Selch, and Aldera crosses her arms, willing herself not to attack him again. “You for whom I have only the highest expectations.”

She wonders what it is he sees in her that has him—the arch Bringer of Chaos—so set upon weighing and measuring her worth. Many has been the man who has seen fit to test her, but that Emet-Selch is only the latest in a long line of such men does little to remove the foreboding that his interest portends. How carefully he watches her now.

Aldera sighs. “You think so little of my personhood that you seek out my past woes in order to deliver the most cutting edge with your words. I am truly honored. Now would you please get on with it? I am as tired of this as you are.”

“...Very well,” Emet-Selch says after a long moment of looking at her with narrowed eyes.

-

He looks like a ghost, sitting in the corner of the Cabinet of Curiosities with a tome in hand, staring out at the levinstorm raging outdoors with a pensive expression on his face. 

Aldera, for her part, does not buy it. Emet-Selch does not make a habit of lingering anywhere in the Crystarium that she or her friends might happen upon unless he wishes them to find him—not even Thancred and his eye for hidden shadows is exempted, which, she knows, is as much a power play as anything else that Emet-Selch does is.

Still—he has begun to show his hand. The conversation will be twisting, confusing, infuriating, and the like, but he did regard her with an increased wariness when he set foot in the Ocular once more, so mayhaps he will not pry at her weak points like a beast on the hunt.

“Alright, what is it,” she says, flat, brows raised.

He makes quite the show of startling from his feigned reverie and blinking coquettishly at her. “Oh  _ my. _ The hero herself! I hardly noticed you.  _ Do  _ forgive me—one loses track of time when one is so ancient. As it so happens, ‘what’ is nothing. Even us ageless ones take time to relax, you know.”

“You don’t relax,” Aldera replies, taking the seat across from him. 

“How well you seem to know me,” is his glib rejoinder. He shuts the tome with a flourish. “I was under the impression that we were not friends, my dear.”

“We’re not. I still have questions for you.”

Emet-Selch blinks, momentarily thrown off, when she retrieves one of her journals and opens it to a blank page. “Is that—are you taking  _ notes?” _

“In case you haven’t noticed... you talk. A _ lot.”  _ She taps her enchanted quill on the page. “Now then...”

-

They’re worried about her.

While everyone is mostly taking the opportunity to attend to business long put off, getting gear mended and the like, someone checks in on her every other hour of the day, and they manage to find her no matter where she is in the Crystarium. Last it was Alisaie, who not only insisted on accompanying her on a routine errand to pick up fodder for the amaros, but demanded to carry said fodder and would not take no for an answer. Aldera huffs, only absently aware of her tail flicking behind her and kicking up loose dirt that fell from planters being carried about.

All this attention. More’s the pity that she hasn’t the slightest clue what to do with it, or how to take it, or anything, really. If only they knew that Ardbert keeps fussing about her like a mother chocobo—though he’s gone off somewhere, now. She lost track of him half a bell ago.

It was a moment’s whimsy that saw her find the most secluded corner of the Horatorium that she possibly could. See if they find me here, or something of the like. 

Hells, even the manager of the Suites was at pains to ensure she knew he was available should she be in need of anything—even refreshments—which is... Aldera is not sure exactly what about it sets her off-kilter. She is ill-suited to such things. Mayhaps it is that. In childhood a day’s repast was whatever the ship had on hand for crew, generally dolefully nutritious fare like hardtack. And in adulthood—well, the Scions changed things, but at first, while she had a wider variety of choice, for fear of unwisely spent gil she mostly stuck to that which supplied her body with what it needed to spend long hours on the road, none of which was particularly tasty or plentiful.

She really ought to be used to the perks of heroism by now.

And yet she is not. Aldera shifts and leans against the crate she is hiding behind, idly watching the way the muscles of her bare legs shift as she moves them to and fro. They paint a bright contrast to the dark waters below. With the day set to be spent in the city’s walls, and no directive afoot other than rest, she decided to combine comfort and fashion: a sweater, her scarf, and a nice skirt she found at the Crystalline Mean that flares just the way she likes it to. And sandals, though she plans to shirk them the moment she returns to her suite.

“You know, if you’re trying to hide, you might want to tuck your legs in rather than let them dangle freely for all to see. And hide your tail,” Thancred advises behind her.

Aldera wheezes, clutching at her heart, which is now racing about a yalm a second. “Dear  _ gods,  _ Thancred!”

“Did I startle you? My apologies.” There’s a smile in his voice. He is not very terribly sorry at all, she suspects, not when he takes a seat very close to her and—yes—he is indeed smiling pretty, with no remorse to be found in him whatsoever. “Alisaie sent me. She was quite concerned about your insistence on—what was it again? Ah, yes: ‘overworking yourself to death’. I’ll spare you the several other descriptors she provided.”

“I was carrying fodder to the amaros. Or I was trying to. She was the one who insisted on doing the bulk of the work,” Aldera mutters.

He makes an amused noise. Not quite a laugh, but somewhere close. “I thought it might be something like that. Still, it seemed best to check anyways, given the circumstances.”

“You people.” But she understands why. She is afraid, too. Has been afraid. Now that the air is clear—now that she is coming to understand something she is still uncomfortable with voicing—she has so much more to lose than just herself. “If anything has changed, I can hardly tell. There have been no further episodes—not yet, at any rate.”

“No news would seem to be good news for the moment, then. As it would happen, I have no pressing business for the rest of the day. Ryne is out and about doing her level best to become your greatest rival in the field of competitive do-goodery, and a few vital pieces of my equipment are in with the Mean for repairs. If you want for company...” He trails off, hunching in on himself. Just a tad. But she has long watched him and his moods, and she knows he sought her out with a purpose. Likely to reassure himself as to her condition, if she had to guess.

So Aldera puts a hand on his shoulder. Thancred doesn’t look at her, seeming to find the glowing fronds of the gigantic plant growing in the waters below extremely fascinating. She leans in, pressing her lips to the warm skin where jaw meets neck. 

“Thancred,” she says in a low, quiet voice. He shivers. “I should be glad of your company.”

Though the Horatorium is dimly-lit, owing to the nature of the plants being grown, there is still some light. Enough to see the dark of want in his eyes when he looks at her. “Since when were you a purposeful tease, darling?”

“Since you made me wait five moons and then some to make good on a particular promise,” Aldera says with a small smile. She stands and offers him a hand up, which he takes, and when he stands, he does not let go. The intent look in his eyes as he takes her in makes her heart flutter and her pulse quicken. She laces their fingers together. “But let us see what the evening brings. There’s areas of the city I have not yet had occasion to explore. Will you come with me?”

Thancred pulls her close, flush up against him, and through her horns she can hear his own quickened heartbeat as he leans down and brushes his lips against her temple. “It would be my pleasure. You look lovely, by the by. That skirt—”

“You like the skirt? Good. I do too. Look, it flares when I spin.” Taking a step back, but still not relinquishing his hand, she does a little spin, fully aware that the motion exposes more skin than she would otherwise be comfortable with.

He blinks several times. She waits, grinning.

“...Do me a favor,” he manages, his voice a touch ragged, “and do refrain from doing that while we’re out and about.”

“We’ll see,” she sing-songs, pulling him along with a lightness in her chest that is unfamiliar, but welcome.

\- 

They only begin to make for her suite well into the night—long after dinner with Ryne, Y’shtola, and Alphinaud at the Wandering Stairs, after Aldera discovers the gardens between the Catenaries and the Pendants, after she spends a small eternity going back and forth on whether she wants to return in the daylight hours to sketch out all the different flowers she sees and Thancred simply enjoys watching her take the gardens in. 

So little time apportioned to them for moments like these. He would think that near-death experiences change a man, make him more amenable to such, but if that were entirely true, he would be a changed man countless times over by now. No, he knows the truth.

There is a sort of peace sometimes brought about by the nearness of death. In Amh Araeng, feeling the sun beat down on his broken body, his spent soul, he had felt that—sure, there were lingering regrets. Whatever Aldera thinks, he hadn’t exactly been expecting Ran’jit to show up again, as much as the man is like a cockroach in his own stubborn refusal to finally kick the bucket. There were things he had wanted: to make good on his word, to speak to Ryne, to tell her the truth, to spend time with Aldera... but with all said and done, and the possibility looming, if that had been his moment to cross Death’s threshold, it would not have been the worst moment to do so.

He had apologized to the two most important living women in his life. He had given his all to protect Minfilia’s legacy.

Now it is a beginning.

But then, he was only glad that fate had allowed him to take those first small steps.

“Thancred?”

Aldera, peering up at him with those glowing eyes of hers. With the moonlight as bright as it is he can almost pretend it is simply that light reflecting off of her.

She frowns when she sees she has his attention. “You’re staring. And thinking.”

He has a few options, here, and he considers them, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand as he does. Eventually he shakes his head with a smile he knows is tinged with his sobriety. “Merely... reflecting, I suppose.”

“Ah,” she says, falling quiet. After a moment’s hesitation, she tugs on his hand, and he obediently resumes walking alongside her. “Did I ever tell you of the first occasion I saw deathrot?”

Thancred hums in mock thoughtfulness. “Mmm, no. I do believe that was Y’shtola, my dear.”

“Perhaps not the best tale to tell upon a first meeting,” Aldera acknowledges with a wince. “But I’d just about passed fourteen summers. A little younger than Ryne is now, I think. Our vessel was bound for the uncharted seas, off in search of the raw stone that scholars turn into auracite, as there was a buyer promising a king’s sum for the purest samples and the location of any vein they came from. It ought to go without saying that the danger was great...”

He looks at her, deadpan, as she undoes the lock on her door. “I never would have guessed.”

“Well, yes. I told Y’shtola the tale in hopes of earning a tip to improve my handling of the aetheric balance of my carbuncle. It had to be the most interesting thing I could think of,” she says as they walk in to her quarters. She goes to open the balcony window—a security hazard, but the night sky is beautiful. “All the sorts of things that lurk in abandoned mines and more were about. Now that I think about it, with its age, and the technology used, it was probably a mine of Allag... But the real danger was in the still air. Whoever had mined the place had mined too deep, and with the natural aetheric volatility of the uncharted seas, it was a recipe for a lethal aligning of aspected aether and the earth’s fury.”

“Sounds... awfully familiar,” he says slowly.

She turns to him and nods. “It would. But where Black Rose was manufactured, and its potency intensified by the First’s plight, this was a natural accident. Of sorts. And it worked far, far slower. Those chosen to retrieve the auracite from the mine returned to the ship. Away we went with our prize. But days into our return journey, one by one, they began to fall ill. Fevers and chills to begin with—and a cold going ‘round a ship isn’t that uncommon. Their conditions worsened, though, and soon... soon I saw their skin slough, discolored by horrid splotches, their minds lost. You could hardly sleep for the screaming.”

_ Gods,  _ Thancred thinks. Her eyes have taken on a distant sheen as she stares out at the night blanketing Lakeland’s rock formations.  _ She lived lifetimes before she ever came to us. _

“Near the whole crew fell ill eventually, all with the same symptoms, all with the same fate.” Aldera hesitates. “...Save for me and a few others, the first mate among them. We realized that returning the ship to port was ill-advised. There was one lifeboat. The first mate and I wanted to scuttle the ship, take the boat away. The others wanted to bring the auracite. Pirates are superstitious as they are greedy... and there was a fight over the next course of action. I alone survived. The first mate had knocked me out and hidden me away aboard the lifeboat, then set it adrift. I woke to a yawning emptiness on the horizon with flotsam and jetsam all about me.”

“...They blew the ship to pieces?” Thancred asks, and she nods. “Gods, Aldera.”

Her smile sharpens. “It was but the first time. Though that seed of plague was not spread through me, there were others who ventured in search of that prize—others who made it back to shore. And for their selfishness, many have since perished. After that I went to work with Mistbeard, but in time, it would be the memory of that devastation that saw me seek out a path to understanding. I had not the learning to tell me why deathrot did what it did, but if I could acquire it, then perhaps I could use that knowledge to prevent it from happening again...”

He embraces her from behind, pulling her tight into his arms, and she goes willingly as he hooks his foot in one of the stools in the corner, then drags it up to the balcony and sits upon it. Y’shtola had been incredibly intent on ensuring they were aware of the strange new adventurer she’d met while on a routine trip to measure aetheric fluctuations in La Noscea—and while he has long known that their dear friend’s instincts proved true, as they usually do, now he understands what it was Y’shtola initially saw in Aldera that drove her to hold her up as a prospective candidate for the Scions.

Compassion. Selflessness. An earnest desire to protect something beyond herself. To make the broken world—worlds, now—better than it was.

Every quality that makes for a hero. The absolute refusal to die helps, too.

But she doesn’t see it like that, he knows. He had been the one to go after her after she ran from the Ocular. Not to be seen, what with how poorly she would have taken to that in her rage, but to keep track, to ensure that no harm befell her. And to distract himself from how Emet-Selch’s revelation broke him as it did her.

So much makes sense with the benefit of hindsight at hand. All the shadows ill-concealed in her eyes, the strained silences, the stoic, helpless grief. 

...And beneath that, her steadfast belief that she ought to be better than she is.

She makes a strange noise—like she’d half-formed a word and choked on it. She pauses in his arms, then puts a hand over her face, clearing her throat a couple of times. “Ugh. I spoke too much.”

“Poor darling,” he rumbles, pressing a kiss to the side of her neck. The little shiver that sparks up her spine is delightful. “Though I must say that your resilience and tenacity astounds. Time after time, you face oblivion... and time after time, you do not flinch from it.”

Aldera tilts her head to the side, exposing more of her neck to him in silent invitation. “Well... what else am I supposed to do?”

“I suspect most would flinch, whether that takes on a metaphorical or literal form,” he tells her.

She twists in his hold to sit with her side up against his chest—to meet his eyes. “I do flinch, you know. I just... I keep going.”

Thancred’s heart breaks, just a little, at the rueful curl to her lips, the upward slant of her brows. He gathers her closer. Not that there’s much closer to get. “I know.”

“...And—” Aldera hesitates, biting her lip. “You... you also know you can touch me. If you want.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. Teasing is all very well and good—and he knows she wouldn’t do that if she weren’t comfortable with it. But he has not forgotten the anguish in the way she screamed as she snapped and threw Emet-Selch into the wall of the Ocular when he laid bare her heart before all of them. None of them have forgotten, and he knows not everyone has forgiven him for it, to say nothing of his own feelings on the matter.

That she deserves a better lover than him is indisputable.

But she chose _ him,  _ not someone else, and he will not do her the disservice of taking liberties with her again without being sure they are on the same page. 

She nods. “Though given my... state, I understand if—”

“Let me know how you feel,” he requests, already bringing her face to his. “We will feel it out as we go.”

“Okay,” Aldera whispers.

-

“...Not that you would remember any of this,” Emet-Selch says, looking at her out of the corner of his eyes, some shadowed meaning in his words with an implication she does not know how to parse. 

_ Remember. _

She is not fool enough to think he did not choose his words with care. Everything Emet-Selch does has purpose—the only question is to what end. And she would be more fool than she is not to seize on that. She matches him, careful gaze for careful gaze. “’Remember’?”

“Oh,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her, something indescribably—something—something  _ sad, _ what else could the heaviness that seems to weigh him down suddenly mean—“Never you mind. More of this talk is a pleasure for later. Back to work, hero.”

“Wait, hold on, I want to know,” she says, holding out her hand.

Emet-Selch is quiet. And whatever is going on in his mind, it is far, far away from the present moment as he crosses his arms, taking her in with a look she has never seen before on his face. Consideration, mixed with realization, she thinks, though she is not at all certain. 

Again she is struck by just how  _ old _ this man is. How many of their mortal lifetimes he has seen, how many he has disdained, how many he has participated in—how utterly exhausted he seems, from his perpetually slumped shoulders to his constantly drooping eyes. He masks it well, this immortal being, but she remembers: only three escaped the sundering he spoke of. And one of those three was Lahabrea. 

Not exactly the best company. 

She shifts. And mayhaps the motion reminds him of where he is and who he is speaking to, because he gives her a small, willful smile, and he says, “No.”

Aldera cannot quite bring herself to be angry, or even indignant. He walks away with his customarily catty wave, and that is when Ardbert comes to stand at her side, watching Emet-Selch walk away with a contemplative look of his own.

-

“What a disappointment you turned out to be.”

Aldera grits her teeth, meeting Emet-Selch’s gaze. 

“I placed my faith in you. Let myself believe you could contain the Light,” he says with a disdainful sneer, true anger in his eyes. “But look at you now. Halfway to becoming a monster. You are  _ unworthy  _ of my patronage.”

For all the life of her she will never remember how it is that she staggers to her feet. She has to lean on her sword for purchase—she knows that much. There is one burning question on her mind. One revelation as the Light writhes and tears at her soul—at the very core of her being—as it howls, trying to consume what is Aldera, trying to leave only itself.

_ Hold fast, damn you—DAMN YOU—  _ Fray is screaming inside her head. His bulwark will not long hold back the everlasting brightness enveloping her.

“Tell me something,” she says, her voice echoing with monstrous reverb, willing herself to stay, scrabbling for purchase. Emet-Selch looks at her, waiting. She swallows something down and she does not want to know what it is. “Who... who was I to you...”

His eyes widen.

“Who was I to you... before the Sundering?”

“How dare you,” Emet-Selch says—the only time she has ever heard his voice rise against his will. “You fail to fulfill your purpose and you dare ask that of me?”

Aldera closes her eyes. Every ilm of the existence she has is howling in pain. “I can think... of no other reason... you would even try. Try to divert from your chosen course. Unless you saw—someone else in me—a shadow—of someone who mattered—”

The Light howls back. Aldera has no attention to spare for anything other than stemming the flood. To slow the onslaught long enough to give her friends time to end it before it is too late.

“Thancred,” she whimpers. Her voice echoes. Grows stronger, more resounding, the Light warping her—“Thancred, I am sorry—”

_ I will not die— _

_ I will not die like this— _

“...What Vauthry achieved through bliss,  _ you _ will achieve through despair,” Emet-Selch is saying to her.

_ No. No. NO _

_ END THIS, DAMN YOU—ALDERA— _

It is not her who moves her hand—not the Light, either. It is Fray, his last vestiges grappling for control with the Light, his purpose one with hers. He grasps her sword. Raises it with her own shaky hands. There was only ever one way to end this. One way to do the right thing—one way to set the balance right—

“Aldera!” Thancred—is it Thancred? It must be Thancred, screaming like that—

“Well. At least she is trying to do the honorable thing,” Emet-Selch remarks to no one in particular. “Not that it will avail you of anything. I pity you, I truly do...”

She hears little else but his invitation, after that. To die with dignity.

To bring some small measure of peace.

How terribly, remarkably... human.

-

_ Yasu wakes to the sun shining on her face and the smell of lavender perfume near her nose. She wriggles, her tail shifting, and above her, she hears soft laughter. _

_ The laughter of someone she loves. _

_ “Did you sleep well, Yasu, darling?” asks a voice with many voices—high and merry, low and content, quiet and assured. _

_ She wrinkles her nose. The sun is too bright. She can’t see who’s speaking to her. _

_ “How far you have come,” says the many-voice, stroking her hair, two gentle fingers lightly urging her eyelids closed again. “But it is not quite time for you to wake, sweetling. Do not come to me yet. This shore is not yours to cross. Not now—and not for many long years, I hope.” _

_ Huh? _

_ She tries to sit up—to struggle awake— _

_ “Do not mistake my meaning. Your path... merely does not lie this way. Not yet. Be at rest, my dearest... my Lady Lightwing.” _

_ Wait— _

And then Aldera is suddenly—impossibly—awake.

-

“I will not let it end here,” she says, watching that eternal, godsbedamned Light shining out over the land. “...I will do what must be done. I will find a way to truly end this. No matter the cost to me. The people of this world deserve better... better than I have done for them thus far.”

“Aldera...” Ardbert trails off.

She knows.

There is no other way. There is no other end.

-

Again she wanders the Crystarium—in a world everything and nothing like the way it was before. And once again, the people and their hope astonish her.

Ardbert promises to fight alongside her. To fight her himself, if the need comes. And when she goes to the Exarch’s private hideaway the truth waits for her in a memory that sets her course. Aldera feels as if she can begin to breathe again, something inside her that is not the Light settling now that she has a plan, now that she can take action.

Ryne’s barrier, holding the Light back from her soul, will not last forever. But with what time remains to her—she can make a difference.

She can. She must. 

Emet-Selch’s vision for her will not become reality. She will not allow it.

He’s wrong. Aldera is going to prove it.

-

“Urianger,” Aldera says very calmly. “Come here.”

Urianger takes a step back. Thancred, not taking kindly to being walked into, pokes him forward again. “...M-Milady...”

_ “Come over here,  _ Urianger. The rest of you too,” she says to her friends.

After a moment’s hesitation, Urianger approaches, resignation in every step. The others follow.

Aldera smiles—and forcibly pulls him into a very, very tight hug, just tight enough to be uncomfortable, yanking him down to her height. He stumbles forward with a noise she only distantly recalls hearing when Moenbryda did similarly to him, and she looks at the others over his shoulder with a mad little grin. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get over here. He needs more than one.”

“W-What—” he starts, only to make another noise like a startled cat when Ryne joins Aldera with a mischievous, bright laugh, and Thancred follows suit with a fey little smile she’s going to have to get him to replicate later. “What manner of—”

“We don’t have all day,” Aldera says to Y’shtola and the twins.

Y’shtola snorts. “And yet this is how you choose to spend it?”

“We really ought to be getting on,” Alphinaud hedges, which seems to settle it for Alisaie, who pushes him into Urianger (and half into Thancred) before joining the pile. He grapples for balance before Thancred helpfully rights him. “Oh, very well... it will be alright, Urianger, I assure you. Whatever it is.”

Aldera widens her eyes and blinks coquettishly at Y’shtola, doing everything she can to say  _ pleeeeeeease?  _ without actually giving voice to the sentiment. Her dear, dear friend looks on, her tail flicking, before finally she sighs, raising her hands in defeat. “...Fine. But  _ only  _ for a moment.”

Y’shtola joins them, and Aldera laughs in delight, surrounded by those dearest to her.

“Why—?” Urianger asks, his voice thick with tears.

She pats his head, glad she chose to leave off putting the heavy armor on until hitting the investigation site, and says nothing of it when her shoulder grows wet. “Because we have not lost yet. Because you are a good man. Because this world yet yearns to be saved, and it is still within our power to find a way—to make good on the hopes not just our own, not just the hopes of the people, but the hopes of those who came after us. Those who flung a light backwards through so much darkness to give us a fighting chance. I will do all I can to see that hope honored. Will you?”

“I shall,” he says. His shoulders shake. She looks at each of her friends in turn as he speaks. “I do not deserve such faith, Aldera—but I shall, with all the might and wisdom apportioned unto me.”

“Good man.” She releases him and steps back—as do the others, all variously reclaiming their personal space, all eyeing her with varying degrees of restrained grief and curiosity. Aldera smiles, wry and sad. “My friends... rare is the opportunity to choose one’s end, and I would rather not do so yet. But I am resolved to find a way to save this world, and I suspect the answer may be found deep in the Tempest, where G’raha awaits a rescue. Will you come with me?”

“You know the answer to that,” Alisaie grouses. 

Alphinaud nods. “We have a duty to this world. And I will not give you up, my friend. As I once did for Estinien, so now I also determine to do for you. All I can, all I may, until such a time as I can move no longer.”

-

Ryne is crying.

Aldera takes her into her arms, pressing her lips to Ryne’s hair. “I never asked to be saved, either.”

“But—I—but—how do you go on?”

How many people have asked her that over the years—with increasing disbelief as her trials grew all the more arduous.

Whether it is sentiment or acknowledgement or resolution that drives her words, she is not quite sure. But she says them all the same.

“Fate can be cruel, but a smile better befits a hero,” Aldera tells Ryne. A piece of the past, one held closely to her heart in grief for so, too long. Ryne does not know of Haurchefant. Does not know the way the world shattered under the light of the dying sun, that day at the edge of the Vault, how a good man’s lifeblood sputtered up from his lips instead of air. They are worlds apart—both in the literal sense and the figurative. All Aldera has seen and done since Haurchefant’s death has changed her beyond measure.

The girl she was, shy and uncertain, had died with him.

Would that Ryne requires no such loss to steel her resolve. There is so much more to say, but this is all she dares with the time left to her. And Ryne’s brow furrows—the question lights in her eyes—but she then shakes her head. “I don’t know that I fully get it, but... I think I’ll understand better if I try it for myself.”

-

“Who was I to you?”

Emet-Selch’s hands ball into fists.

“You never answered the question,” she says, knowing she is playing with fire as she does. “Half-broken I may be, but that is not new. You considered me as much from the start, and still you tried to place your faith in me. You told me of this place before we came—and you also told me I would not remember any of it. And yet in every ilm of this phantasm you have created sits something on the edge of familiarity. Something just out of reach. Who was I when my soul was yet unsundered? When it was not spread so thin that only a shard remained of whoever it is you recognize within me?”

For a moment it seems as if he will break. But he shrugs—it is his tone, tight and snappy, that belies his anger. “You think a failed reflection deserves an answer to that? Then beat it out of me, as you did in the Tower. I shall be waiting.”

-

“Can you—explain exactly what happened?”

Aldera looks down. Then to where she knows the axe still lays buried in the phantom ground—the axe that is finally clean of Ardbert’s own lifeblood from where he slit his own throat, some hundred years past. 

Her friends have followed her gaze.

Where to begin?

“One of my ghosts,” she says, keeping a steady gaze fixed on the axe as it dissipates. As Ardbert is finally free to rest. “came along for the ride.”

Thancred frowns—he, too, is still staring at where the axe was. “...That weapon, it seemed awfully familiar—”

In the far distance, a column of water breaks through the fathomless depths and begins to pour downward. Her eyes widen.

“An old friend. And an old enemy. But I can tell the tale in full once we are out of here. In fact, all else can wait, because I rather have a feeling that we haven’t the luxury of time to stand about chatting,” Aldera says hastily, grabbing Ryne’s hand and Alisaie’s shoulder and ushering them along. “Come along now, all of you, right now if you please! I do believe the bubble is fading! Thancred, get G’raha!”

“I can walk—” G’raha protests.

Thancred shakes his head. “Oh no you don’t. The lady commanded, and so you shall get... gotten.”

“Wait—”

He doesn’t wait. He scoops G’raha up and hauls him over his shoulder, following Aldera at a run, and the rest of them, too, break into sprints of their own as water begins to break through Bismarck’s bubble.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> *These are overall notes for the story, and may grow as time goes on.
> 
> Mihren, Aldera's friend, is Mihren Mionne, @masqvia's WoL.


End file.
